Resident Evil: Rebirth
by Real Dark inferno
Summary: An altered Version of Afterlife, following more closly to the original script.
1. Prologue

Resident Evil: Rebirth

Prologue

AN: I do not own Resident Evil and I am not making profit from this work. This story was commissioned by

"My name is Alice." The words sent a very cold chill down Dr. Samuel Isaacs's spine, and he stopped barking the orders immediately. With fear rising up from the pit of his stomach, he glanced over to the security Officer standing opposite him and gave the man a curt nod before spinning round to face his experiment. "And I remember everything."

She was smiling. Not a childlike smile, those were filled with joy and applaud. This was the smile of a predator, the same look a lion or a tiger would convey whilst stalking their prey. Only she was no lion or tiger, she was much more dangerous.

She was Alice Abernathy, AKA Project Alice, a security operative formerly employed by the Umbrella Corporation to guard the Raccoon City facility, codenamed 'The Hive'. Her body had been infected with the T-Virus during the outbreak and Isaacs and his colleague Cain had abducted her as well as the other survivor when they emerged and put them into the Nemesis program. Shortly before his death however, Cain had released them both into the chaos of an overrun Raccoon City. Isaacs had found her burnt body lying in the bed of a waterfall the next day, under the twisted wreckage of Cain's helicopter.

At first he had feared her dead, but by then the T-Virus had bonded with her cells and had brought her back from Death's brink in little over a week. Now she was standing before him fully recovered, naked except for a plain white sheet that only just protected her modesty, and much to Isaacs's displeasure, armed with the metal pen he'd given her just moments ago. Then it had been but a simple tool he'd used to judge her mental receptiveness to his questions, now it was a most lethal weapon.

The ballpoint's ink soaked tip was poised like a scorpion's tail, ready to pierce the eye of the foolish young scientist who had dared to linger too close to Alice. Isaacs had already forgotten the fool's name; he was incidental, a dime a dozen, and didn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, not like himself.

Realising the danger, the good doctor moved to run but his movement seemed to trigger a reaction in Alice as she dropped the pen, only to ram her elbow into the confused scientist's jaw. The blow knocked him to the floor and he laid their unconscious whilst the previously amnesic test subject lashed out at the nearest target. There was no stopping her now and all chaos broke lose as the remaining scientists who were still standing ran for their lives.

It was almost a relief to Isaacs when the guard he'd previously signalled to, finally came to his senses and charged the rampaging woman. Dressed in the tactical black ballistic suit, the man should have over-powered her with ease but Alice was faster and had swung about before he could finish rounding the equipment. Her fist cracked against his windpipe with a sickening crunch and Isaacs was left to wonder if the guard was dead before or after he hit the floor. However, now there was nothing standing between him and Abernathy's vengeance and she stepped towards him like a grim Spector of death.

"No! Please think about what you are doing…" He pleaded, desperately trying to buy himself some much needed seconds but Alice was in no mood to hear it and she lunged forward and grabbed him by the neck. Her fingers were cold and inhumanly strong as they closed around his wind pipe, shutting off oxygen to the Chief Scientist's brain as she whirled around and tossed him head first into the recovery tank. The glass shattered on impact and Dr Isaacs fell to the floor in a bloody heap.

* * *

><p>For throwing that twisted witch doctor into the tank he'd previously held her captive in, Alice felt better than she had in years; It was good to give back some of the pain he and Cain had bestowed upon her and her friends. She was wondering how good it would be to finish him when another one of Umbrella's soldiers appeared. He looked older than the last and had the good sense not to try and rush her, or perhaps he was just too cowardly. The taser gun he had drawn suggested the prior but Alice never knew what to expect when it came to Umbrella.<p>

He fired the darts without warning and a few thousand volts slammed into her system like a pair of fluffy pillows. She felt nothing but the sting of the hooks and the guard obviously didn't know what to do next as she gave him a look that said 'Is that all you got?' He tried to run when she ripped the barbs out but didn't get far as she hurled the sparking curves of metal right back at him. He fell to the ground, screaming and blubbering before finally going still.

Turning back to the deathly still body of Dr. Isaacs, Alice was about to break his neck when suddenly she heard the distant sound of sirens and realised one of the fleeing doctors must have triggered the alarm. Not wanting to be around when the dozen men with sub-machine guns burst into the lab, she decided it was time to take her leave. Grabbing a white lab coat, she let her grip on her towel covering her go slack while threading her arms through the sleeves and doing up the tie. Yet as she was leaving, she suddenly became aware that she was being watched. _'A camera…'_

Alice hated being watched. It reminded her of being back in the Hive, where every move she made had been watched diligently by the Red Queen and she had been powerless to do anything about it. Now however, things were different.

The feeling only got worse as she left the lab. It crept along her spine like a snake as she emerged out in a chamber that's ceiling was held up by immense stone pillars, it teased her mind in every way possible until she couldn't take it anymore. Casting her eyes up at the ceiling, she spotted a security camera looking down at her and couldn't help smile that dangerous smile again. She could hear the guard who was watching her speaking now. He sounded scared, good; she wanted Umbrella to fear her. He was trying to call for help, mumbling over the words hastily as his fear got the better of him. It was fun to hear but like all predators, Alice quickly got tired of toying with her prey and wanted him to be quite. His call suddenly went dead, the last thing anyone heard of the guard was a scream that was half silenced by his throat filling up with blood.

She met no further resistance, either they had got the message she wasn't someone to fuck around with or they were setting up a trap. Alice didn't know which she'd prefer. While a fight with Umbrella's soldiers was always fun, given that all she'd have to contest against their fire-arms and body armour was a lab coat, it may be weighted ever so slightly in their favour.

Navigating her way through the maze of corridors, she finally found herself in the facility's lobby and without looking; Alice pushed open the glass door and stepped out into the night air. It was a cold evening; a sharp wind was blowing lightly and the feel of it against her skin sent a shiver down her spine. Or perhaps it had something to do with the dozen or so automatic rifles that were suddenly all pointing towards her.

An entire squad of Umbrella's soldiers had set up positions around the door and looking in all directions, Alice saw that she was completely surrounded, trapped between a wall and a hard place. Ominous clicks rang through the night as the soldiers chambered their rounds, letting her know that they meant business, should the red laser sights aiming at her heart have left any doubt in her mind.

"Shit" whispered Alice, her eyes jumping from one soldier to the next as she tried to find a weakness in their formation she could exploit. It wouldn't be easy getting out of this one; the soldiers were packed tighter than sardines and all appeared to have itchy trigger fingers at the ready. One wrong move and she'd be cut down in a hail of gun fire. To put it another way, she was fucked.

A soldier took a step closer; he was the only one not wearing a helmet so Alice guessed he was the squad leader. A sergeant probably, Umbrella always enjoyed throwing away NCOs as they were easy to replace. He probably thought capturing their run away Nemesis Program would be a good way to make that jump up the pay grade, well if he came to close; Alice would make sure that he earned it, providing he survived of course.

Distracted by the approaching officer, Alice almost missed the silently running SUV that pulled up behind the group of men. The Sergeant didn't however and he turned around just in time to see the doors opening and a trio of Umbrella executives stepping out. Or at least who they thought were executives.

Alice wasn't fooled however; she knew exactly who these three impostors were and was tempted to smile as Jill Valentine brushed past the NCO without a glance. She may have swapped her tube top and mini-skirt for a Kevlar bodysuit, but her attitude was just as potent. "Thank You Gentlemen but we'll be taking it from here."

"But…wait! On whose authority?" The Sergeant asked, scrambling to block her path but was then brushed aside by Carlos Olivera who flashed a phoney I.D his way whilst saying "Classified…Level Six authorisation. So stand down sergeant or be shot." The NCO wisely shut up from then on and when no one was looking, Alice couldn't resist giving Carlos a genuine smile.

The laser sights lowered as Jill came up to Alice's level. Not wanting to give away her cover, the former S.T.A.R.S officer didn't say a friendly word as she took her by the arm and lead her down the steps to the cruiser. Carlos was a little warmer as he put his jacket over her shoulders to help fight against the cold. LJ was holding the door of the cruiser open for her.

Not willing to risk breaking their cover, the three Raccoon City survivors kept up the guise even when the cruiser's heavy doors and tinted windows had hidden them from the soldiers' view. The atmosphere in the vehicle was tense as the risk of being discovered grew by the second yet much to their relief, no one tried to stop them as they pulled away. LJ kept their speed at a steady 15MPH has he drove the group through the compound, all went well until they reached the checkout station.

Stopping at the barrier as a pair of guards came out to greet them, Carlos calmly showed them the ID he'd used to silence the sergeant. Taking it off him after a brisk salute, the gateman examined it for a moment before glancing up at Alice. Something was wrong.

He looked like he was about to question her but the shrill ringing of a phone made him and his partner retreat back into their huts to answer the call.

"Be ready." Carlos whispered, putting the ID back in his jacket pocket before reaching under the dash board. Following his hand, Alice saw that there was a Heckler & Koch USP-9 taped underneath. "Alright, get ready to floor it LJ."

Then, from out of nowhere, the barrier lifted and LJ was saved the trouble of putting the SUV through its paces when the guards waved them through. Breathing a sigh of relief, Alice let herself relax back in the seat and watch idly as they finally pulled out of the facility, completely missing the small bundle in the back seat that suddenly came out of hiding.

"Alice!" Angie cried, throwing her arms around the woman's neck in a tight hug. Surprised by the child's miraculous appearance, she had to stop herself from reflexively breaking the girl's neck before returning the uneasy embrace. "Are you all right?"

Alice smiled but before she could answer, a sudden feeling of coldness came over her. It felt something like slipping into a cold bath, only in reverse. Growing light headed as a feeling of numbness ran down her spine, she just had enough time to hear Carlos say "It's good to have you back." Before she fell unconscious.

* * *

><p>A deep pot-hole jeered the cruiser violently, waking Alice with a start. Surprised by the volatile wake up call, she reached for her gun with the real intention of blowing anyone and everyone away, only the weapon was missing from its holster. The leather holster was missing too, in fact just about all of her clothes were gone.<p>

She could feel something small snuggled next to her, a child. Blinking past the haze of confusion she cautiously looked down and saw that Angela Ashford was sleeping next to her. The sight of the peacefully sleeping child made all the nights livid events come back to her in one great rush and she couldn't resist fondly stroking the girl's light chestnut coloured locks, causing her to fidget ever so slightly in the cramped seating arrangements. The kid had lost everything and yet she still slept easier than she could.

"So you're finally awake." Said Jill, turning away from the cruiser's rear-view window to face Alice; "You gave us quite a scare there, but then I guess escaping from Umbrella's primary facility isn't as easy as busting out of a city overrun by the infected." It was a poor attempt at humour, but Alice smiled all the same; it was comforting for her to know that Jill hadn't changed. "So what did they do to you?"

"You don't want to know." Alice said before turning back to look out her window. They were driving through an industrial estate, large, graffiti stained warehouses all in various stages of disrepair lined the street like broken dominos and she could just make out a sign saying **'You are leaving Detroit'** beneath a flickering street light. "We're in Detroit?"

"The resistance is in Detroit." Carlos said before looking back at her. "We'll be there in a few minutes."

"The resistance…" Alice asked, unable to hide her confusion as she looked from him to Jill, and then back at Carlos. "What resistance?"

"The Resistance against Umbrella." Jill said, no longer looking at Alice as instead she kept a watchful eye on the passing surroundings; watching for any sign that they might be heading into an ambush.

'_Against Umbrella…'_ The news made Alice a loss for words as she tried to piece together the picture. Back in the hive, Matt had told her that there were those working to stop Umbrella but she had thought they were more like Green-Piece activists than a resistance force. Could there really be a military force devoted to the destruction of Umbrella, or were they just a group of wronged mercenaries and delusional survivors who think they can make a difference.

Carlos was as good as his word when he said they'd be there in just a few minutes, indeed Alice had counted four when they suddenly turned off the main road and ran across a loading bay that was littered with the broken or rusted remnants of heavy equipment before pulling up in front of one of the warehouses. It was ugly and rundown, with not one brick of its exterior untouched by either time or vandalism. The windows had all been steel-shuttered, making it clear the place had been abandoned for some time.

Not put off by its rundown state, LJ parked the Cruiser on the curb in front of the warehouse and killed the still smoothly running engine. Unbuckling their seatbelts, Carlos, Jill and LJ disembarked from the cruiser. Following suit, Alice was about to follow them out when she felt the sleeping Angie begin fidgeting against her and not wanting to leave the girl alone in the SUV, she scooped Angie up in her arms and with a little help from the T-Virus, carried her out into the night air.

Looking distinctly like a mother and daughter, Alice and the sleeping Angie followed the trio. Peering through the gloom, she could just make out a pair of painted black double doors. There was a rusty padlock and chain dangling from the handles but Jill ignored it, instead lifting up a cover that resembled the brick work to reveal a key-pad. She punched in the code without looking back, causing a rusty grinding to echo out from within the walls as the doors were suddenly lifted up to reveal the warehouse's interior.

"Welcome to the resistance's headquarters."

In a state of shock, Alice felt her eyes widening as she looked inside the dilapidated building. Despite the run down state of its exterior, the interior was teeming with life, a high-tech mecca full of state of the art technology and weapons cases. Ripped of all the usual distractions you'd expect to find in a warehouse such as this, it appeared to be an pompously large and glancing up, she saw that layers of walkways, balconies and offices rimmed the higher walls, suggesting that there might be even more levels to this chamber. On the roof, she could see that an old skylight had been left uncovered, allowing a view of the star littered night sky to any who wished to crane their heads.

Unable to keep the shock from her face, Alice looked on with a wide eyed expression on her face; it most certainly wasn't what she was expecting. Powerful computer stations and surveillance systems had been set up all over the headquarters and sections of every wall were dominated by digital photographs and video captures of Umbrella associates.

At the group's arrival, curious eyes suddenly turned in their direction and whispered murmurings broke out amongst the populace like wildfire as flanked by Jill, Carlos and LJ, Alice and the sleeping Angie strode into the mobile command centre. Subconsciously, she counted between thirty and forty people, all of whom she noted were carrying side arms or were well within reach of a firearm. However before she could investigate further, the wall on the warehouse's opposing side suddenly burst open to reveal a concealed door and three figures emerged from it.

A man was in the lead, he looked to be around forty but the short cut brown hair and broad shoulder line made it hard for her to be exact. Dressed in a green shirt and red leather body warmer with black trousers and boots, he would have looked right at home in a trailer park, but the shoulder holstered 44. Magnum gave him an air of danger. This, Alice decided, was not a man to fuck around with or take lightly.

The same couldn't be said for his companions. On his left was a girl who looked barely into her twenties, she had cropped brown hair and a kind, rounded face that made any façade of toughness her worn leather jacket and baggy tan jeans may try to bestow, totally redundant. On his right was a man who would have looked far more at home in an office and a tailored suit. His comb over brown hair was stained by streaks of grey and he had a straightened walk that testified to years in an administrative position.

"Valentine! It's about time you showed up." The leader said, his heavy jaw twisting in a grin that didn't suit him as he turned toward Alice. "So is this the famous Alice Abernathy I've heard so much about?"

"You bet your sweet ass it is." Jill answered, smiling a cat like smile as she gestured between Alice and the three. "Alice, these are the leaders of the resistance and chairmen of the 'I hate Umbrella' fan club. Barry Burton…Rebecca Chambers…and George Hamilton."

"Charmed, now do you have a cigarette? I could really do with a smoke."

Grinning, Carlos pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and passed one of the sticks to Alice and then lighting it for her a moment later. The end burning a bright gold as she inhaled the toxins, enjoying the feel of its venom causing through her system and feeding her a relief she hadn't enjoyed in weeks.

"Mmmmm…Thanks." She said to Carlos, exhaling a puff of smoke before clasping the fag tightly in the corner of her mouth as she turned her attention back to Burton. "So why do you hate Umbrella?" She was being direct, possibly boarding on rude, but the man only grinned as if it was a refreshing change.

"We ran afoul of Umbrella in the Arkley Mountains, back when we were part of S.T.A.R.S. We'd discovered Umbrella was preforming illegal viral and biological experiments and our teams were sent in to investigate the legality of the claims." His voice was as gruff as his stubble ridden chin could suggest but Alice could sense

"I, my partner, Barry and Rebecca were the only ones to make it out of that hell hole alive!" Interrupted Jill, her voice betraying the anger she felt at the memory as she lit up her own cigarette. The outburst caused Angie to squirm slightly and seeing it, Jill managed to calm down enough to lower her voice. "Of course, our findings were dismissed. Our commander claimed we had no proof and then promptly shit canned us to keep us from talking. I swear that fucker was on Umbrella's payroll." A dry chuckle reverberated around the small circle at the comment and even LJ and Carlos, who had seen the depths of Umbrella's corruption first hand, could enjoy the humour.

"Ironically the bastard probably saved our lives." Burton added in, "If we hadn't been suspended than we'd of been in the City when the shit hit the fan."

"Anyway, after we escaped Raccoon I brought LJ and Carlos here. When we learnt you had survived, Barry and Rebecca helped us plan a way to get you out."

Hearing her name mentioned, Rebecca took a step forward. She looked nervous, perhaps not so use to taking the centre stage as Burton. "While on suspension, we were able to track down a number of people who had had connections to Umbrella. They gave us all we'd need to know in order to breach their security." She was gaining confidence now and the words seemed to be coming easier to her. "Hi I'm Rebecca and if you need anything, just let me know."

"Err-thanks." Alice said, not entirely sure of just what to make of the proclamation. "Well I need a gun…and perhaps some new clothes."

"I'll take her." Carlos cut in, causing Rebecca to look almost deflated until he added "Rebecca, can you take Angie to her bed, she's had a long night." It was as if the mercenary had given her some great task and she took the sleeping child from Alice with a wide smile. For a moment, Alice wanted to protest but Carlos took her aside before she had the opportunity and together they made their way command centre. However her ears were still listening to the remainder of the conversation.

"Barry, where is Chris? There is something I have to tell him." Jill explained, her voice taking on a different tone now that she thought Alice was out of earshot. It sounded like desperation, or perhaps just urgency. She couldn't quite tell.

"Chris left for LA hours ago Jill, he went to go and find his little sister. But we have bigger problems…" The rest of their conversation was lost in the air as Alice and Carlos passed through the concealed door's threshold.

* * *

><p>After the eternal coldness of Umbrella's regeneration tank and the chilling gale that had raged through the night, the scolding hot water that pelted her body in great waves had been just what the doctor ordered. It turned her milky skin pink as the warmth seeped through her in ways shed forgotten were possible. It had been so long since she last showered; she'd forgotten how good one could feel.<p>

Sadly the running waters couldn't wipe away her memories like they could her pain and she was forced to suffer in silence as the faces of every one who had died passed before her mind's eye.

'_It's all because of Umbrella.'_ She thought venomously, the shower doing nothing to sooth her temper even after it had washed the soap and dirt from her. _'They must be made to pain for what they have done.'_

Reluctantly, she turned the shower off when she felt the water temperature slowly start to drop. The cold began to return to her as she pulled the soaked curtain back, but Alice thought nothing of it as she left the last of the water trickle down her naked body. Coldness was something she was accustomed to.

Towelling herself down as she stepped from the shower stall, she walked across the dingy bathroom and came to stand before the rusty sink. The bathroom, if one could call it that, was clouded by thick layers of steam, its metal appliances rusty and littered by flecks of mould and something which looked suspiciously like dried blood. There was a small square mirror hanging on the wall over the sink, its surface smeared by condensation and dirt. A sense of _Déjà vu came over her when she wiped her hand over the reflective surface but in all the excitement of the last few weeks, she couldn't quite pinpoint exactly when she'd lived this moment before. _

_Her reflection stared back at her; outwardly she looked just the same as she always had. There were the same honey golden locks and fierce blue irises, the same pouting red lips and small feminine chin, absolutely identical to the face she had seen every past day of her life. But on the inside, she knew she was as far from the norm as it was possible to get. _

Unable to stop shivering as the steam that floated around the unventilated room began to settle on her skin, Alice soon abandoned the mirror and pushed open the door to her new chambers. It was small and very Spartan like in relation to the great mansion she had lived in barely a month ago. It had minimal furnishings and the apex of those was a single cot with a few blankets and a pillow for comfort. Her clothes had already been lain out for her with a Para Ordnance Nite Tac pistol and its leather holster resting beside them. The garments were simple, a dark green V-neck top with short sleeves and a pair of dark blue jeans that looked a little tight, but she was thankful for anything that might be better than that thin lab coat.

She was just slipping her feet into a pair of Cowgirl boots when suddenly a knock reverberated against the room's door. The person on the other side didn't wait for her response before opening and Alice turned her head just in time to see Carlos standing in the threshold.

"How are you holding up?" He asked, shutting the door behind before walking up to her and holding out another cigarette. As she accepted, Alice couldn't help but note the way his fingers were shaking around the butt.

"I've been worse." She said as he lit the tip, being careful not to inhale too quickly as she took the first puff. "So why does everybody here seem to know my name?"

"Because…Because you're a hero to them Alice." He said, stammering a little as the question caught him by surprise. "You've done things many here could only dream of doing. You've quite literally given Umbrella the biggest fuck you they can imagine and live to tell about it. In their book, you're a hero."

'_Hero huh…'_ She thought, smirking around the fag as the notion appealed to her in no small way. She'd always wanted to be a hero, it had been part of the reason she made contact with Lisa Broward, to be a hero and make a difference in peoples' lives. She'd thought that dream had died with Lisa in the Hive, just another corpse in that facility, only one she thought even the T-virus could never resurrect. It had seemed so impossible back then, in all the chaos and death of those few bleak days, but now she dared to let herself hope, hope that just maybe with the help of these right-minded mercenaries she could do what no one had done before her.

"Do you remember what they were doing to you?" Carlos suddenly asked, making Alice blink in surprise at such an out of the air question. She hadn't thought much on what might have happened to her whilst she'd been unconscious in the Umbrella lab; it went without question that they would have run tests but evidence that they'd had a chance to experiment was lacking.

"I haven't thought about it." She said, suddenly feeling a hot flush coursing through her as she looked up at Carlos. Her eyes slowly feasting on his rugged looks and fierce brown eyes, he wasn't exactly handsome in the conventional term, but he was far from hideous and Alice had been without the feel of a man's touch for longer than she cared to remember. With one last drag, she flicked the fag away into a nearby bin before taking a tentative step towards Carlos, her hand reaching out to run lightly over his shirt covered chest. "I've had a lot on my mind lately."

Taken aback by her sudden forwardness, the former mercenary stood toe-to-toe with the beauty. Almost a foot taller than Alice and as he looked down, he was spoiled with a wonderful view of her pale sapphire eyes. She was enigmatic and her provocative gaze seemed to be staring into his very soul, her exquisitely crafted face leaning ever so slightly forward. He knew he should stop this and he opened his mouth to object; only her lips found his in the last instant and his words died.

Someday in the long distant future, Alice may come to regret her actions, but here and now she wanted him like she had wanted no other. She shivered with need as his hands encircled her slim waist, pulling her against his hard body as their tongues met for the first time in a hungry dance of desires. Passion burned through her veins like liquid fire and her heightened senses were flooded with his intoxicating taste as she lost herself in the moment.

Hungry for more, she growled low in her throat and suddenly pushed Carlos against the metal door, her fingers dipping beneath the silken fabric of his shirt and running wildly over the sinewy muscle of his chiselled chest. In her mind, she was mapping the place of his every scar and battle wound while enjoying the feel of his hot skin trembling under her touch as her fingers racked down his torso. Carlos hissed as her nail scrapped over his nipple and Alice couldn't help grinning as she broke the kiss and leant over to slowly lick the sensitive area behind his ear…

_**Knock-Knock! **_The echoing sound of someone rapping their knuckles against the door broke the two apart faster than a freezing bucket of water. Short of breath, they stepped away from each other and hurriedly tried to compose themselves in case whoever was at the door decided to come in. "Yo Alice, Carlos, you in there?" asked A gruff, accented voice through the door and the couple breathed sigh of relief as they realised it was just LJ. "Common we gotta go."

With a last look in the others direction; they opened the door to the former pimp. For a moment he looked like he might say something but then he discarded whatever it was as a more pressing issue seemed to be on his mind. "Something's going on upstairs." Confused but recognising the desperation in the man's voice, the pair didn't waste time asking questions and hurried out the door with LJ making up the rear.

Beyond the command central, the warehouse's interior was a labyrinth of passages, stairways and small rooms and Alice counted more than a dozen different workshops, labs and firing ranges as she and the men worked their way back to the headquarter's hub. Rounding corner after corner, they finally burst through the concealed doors to find a large crowd had gathered around the chamber's centre in a large circle.

Pushing her way through the tightly pack crowd of onlookers, Alice quickly lost sight of both Carlos and LJ. They had disappeared like rain in the ocean, forcing her to navigate the treacherous depths of the mob alone. All around, people were shoving and jostling like trapped horses and she was forced to use a touch of her T-Virus strength to get through them. Up ahead she could just make out the shapes of two figures having what looked like a heated argument, but whom and why eluded her.

Lost in a sea of faces, barely able to keep her head above the suffocating swells, she desperately sought a safety line; her eyes scouring the masses until she found a profile she recognised. George Hamilton was standing nearby, somehow holding firm against the volatile mass's tug and pull. Fixing her gaze on the man as she laboured to push and shove her way to him, Alice couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief to be momentarily out of the crowd.

"George…" Alice said, almost out breath from the exhausting ordeal. "What's happening?"

Having not noticed the woman's approach, he was caught off guard by her sudden appearance and his head shot round so fast it looked in risk of popping off his shoulders. He brushed it off quickly however, and after running his eyes other her once, he turned back to whatever was at the heart of this outbreak. "Jill and Barry are debating what we should do next." He said in almost nonchalant manner, as if all this was a regular occurrence.

'_Debating?'_ Alice thought before looking around at the still bustling onlookers. '_More like brawling if these bastards are anything to go by.'_

Alice continued to watch the spectacle, unable to get to the source of the problem she decided she'd wait until the mob grew tired of the spectacle. She surmised it wouldn't take long, amusements that weren't violent tended to lose their appeal quickly. It was as she was standing there that suddenly she noticed something unusual, she could hear a low hissing.

The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere, echoes off the walls made it impossible to pinpoint and the crowd wasn't helping matters with its shouting. Focusing all her energies on rooting out the noise, Alice cast her eyes around the hub in a desperate search. Her instincts told her something was wrong, that the noise didn't belong…all she had to do was find it.

It was only be chance that she happened to glance upwards and see the shadows that streaked across the warehouse's roof. Following the shades, her eyes widened in horror as she saw the men in ballistic suits standing over the skylight and going completely unnoticed by the crowd. Realisation sinking in, she swung around and looked at the nearest steel-shuttered window. It was warping and Alice was sure she could see a glow from beneath the brick work. A blowtorch!

Umbrella had found them. The fact hit her like a wall of steel and she was about to shout out a warning when she saw something that made her heart stop. Little Angie was awake and in the crowd. There was an older girl holding her hand; she looked to be in her mid-teens and had dirt blond hair and was wearing a pink vest and a knee length skirt. They were fighting their way through the crowd but when Angie saw Alice and the ten year old suddenly broke away and began running towards her.

"No Angie, stay there!" Alice cried, but she was too late as already the shutters were pealing back and the Umbrella troops behind were hurling small cylinders inside the warehouse. One rolled across the floor and stopped at her feet.

The flash bang grenades exploded with a pop that filled the room with blinding white light and unable to close her eyes fast enough, she was hit by the full force of the explosion. She might have been screaming but she couldn't hear it over the ringing in her ears as the explosion made her stumble back. Blind and deaf, she had just enough sense remaining to drop to her knees, not wishing to present the attackers with an easy target.

She wasn't sure how long she knelt there on the cold stone before her hearing returned, it felt like hours but was most likely only a couple of minutes as the screams of the scared and injured still scorched the night with their song. She could hear blasts of gunfire beneath the cries and made to reach for her pistol as her vision returned, first in entangled shapes, and then distorted blurs. Colour flooded back to her so that she could make out black clad figures standing outside every window, the muzzles of their automatic rifles flashing as they fired a continuous stream of hot lead into the scattering Resistance staff.

Using what little sight she had to aim her gun at the soldiers nearest her, Alice began firing relentlessly at the Umbrella Corporation's mercenaries. Most of her bullets exploded harmlessly on brickwork but at least two hit home as a pair of the ballistic garbed guns-for-hire dropped out of sight.

The shock of suddenly hearing the ominous _click_ of an empty chamber jolted the woman back to the world and jamming the empty gun back into its holster, she began to crawl away. Blessedly the soldiers hadn't noticed her firing in all the confusion and her way was clear for the moment, or at least it was until she spotted the familiar corpse lying next to her. It was George Hamilton, his body riddled with the still smoking bullet holes and the look of shock plainly visible on his face from where he had been caught in the fire.

A child's scream ripped through the night and remembering Angie, Alice immediately turned her head towards the source, her ocean blue orbs opening wide as she saw the diabolical work. Angie was lying still and deathly pale upon the ground, a shallow pool of blood slowly enveloping both her and the other screaming girl.

With little regard for the danger, Alice scrambled to her feet and ran to the children. Bullets flyed all around her a rain of lead but the soldiers' aim was no match for her speed and every round missed its mark. Ignoring the girl in the pink vest as she approached, all feeling suddenly left her legs and she fell to her knees before the lifeless form of Angela Ashford. Looking down through tear glazed eyes at the girl's dead features, Alice became unable to contain her grief and threw back her head and released an agonised cry that echoed around the warehouse and drew the attention of just about every umbrella soldier within a miles radius.

Dozens of sights turned on her in an instant, but Alice no longer cared. Tears were gushing from her eyes and all her hopes and expectations began to crumble around her as the open eyed body of Angie stared past her to a place that might at last grant her the peace life had long denied. All around her, the bloody bodies of slain resistance fighters lay broken and twisted on the cold floor and it was all her fault. This massacre was all because of her, just like Matt and Rain, the Hive and Raccoon City, they had all been her fault. So why do the people she cares about always have to die?

Because she was unarmed, the Umbrella soldiers shouted a warning, but Alice couldn't hear them. She didn't want to hear them. With Angie's death, her life had lost all meaning and now she just wanted it all to end. What was the point in living if everyone close to her always died? Whatever awaited her beyond the veil of death; it had to be better than living with this pain.

With tears still rolling down her checks, she looked up and watched the mercenaries prime their rifles. _'At last…'_ was all she thought before closing her eyes and waiting for the final act.

_**Poppoppoppoppop…**_ She heard the gun shots ring out, but never felt them rip her body to shreds. Was she already dead? Had the bullets already done their work and left her in a huddle on the floor? But then if this was death, why could she still feel the knot in her heart, was she condemned to feel like this for all eternity as punishment for some of her less noble deeds!

A hand grabbed her shoulder firmly, jeering Alice back to life. Puzzled by the fact she was still alive, she opened her eyes and saw a hail of bullets exploding into the Umbrella soldiers. Realising someone was behind her, she spun around to find Jill Valentine, still in her black Umbrella bodysuit, standing over her and emptying an AK-47 into the corporation's mercenaries. Behind her, the girl in the pink vest was watching on wide-eyed while Carlos provided cover with the help of an UZI. In the distance, she could just make out LJ and Barry Burton rushing the fleeing survivors out another concealed exit and the knowledge that not all the resistance had died gave her some comfort.

"Alice we have to go!" Jill cried, practically dragging the lame woman to her feet as the remaining Umbrella troops ducked for cover. Without looking, she shoved a loaded MP5K into her hands before turning to the girl. "Come on Dahlia, it's time for us to go sweetie."

Dahlia looked once at Jill and then at Angie's blood covered body. It was clear she didn't want to leave her friend but she didn't have much of a choice. Umbrella would kill everyone they could this night; even a child like her would not be spared their wrath.

Watching as the girl nodded her head; a new feeling came over Alice. She was moved by this child's courage and couldn't help but wonder if Angie was her first contact with death, or perhaps the hundredth. The loss of a closely held friend could never be easy for one so young to bear, yet this girl had the strength to carry on and see past her own pain. For Alice's power and strength, this girl was stronger than her in just about every respect.

The realisation was as bitter as a lemon and left a strong feeling of loathing brewing inside her breast, but it also gave her the strength to go on. Recognising the weight of the loaded sub-machine gun, she looked to Jill but before she could convey her thanks, a deadly shower of shattered glass suddenly rained down around them. Acting fast, Alice grabbed Dahlia and dived to the side. Jill did the same, only to the opposite side of the falling glass. Thick coils of braded black ropes fell through the broken sky light, followed closely by more black clad figures who abseiled down the ropes.

Using her own body to shield the girl from the falling glass, Alice gave Dahlia a small smile to say she'd be fine. "Are you OK?"

"Yea…" she said, nodding her head frantically as she looked at Alice with wide eyes.

"Good, now…RUN" The woman yelled before rolling to the side so that she was facing the coming danger. Her MP5K already raised, she took aim and fired. The mercenaries moved like blurs as they slid down the ropes but it was nothing her eyes couldn't pick out and she fired off the sub-machine gun in long bursts, cutting their bodies to gore dripping confetti with the armour-piercing rounds.

Obeying the mysterious woman, Dahlia got to her feet and ran for her life. Jumping over bodies and between computers, she could see Carlos firing his Uzi at some invisible target to her left so she veered to the right, not wanting to be caught in the field of fire. However, one of the surviving Umbrella soldiers at the window spotted her and trained his gun on her path, only to be shot through the head as Jill rolled over and emptied the last of her AK-47's mag into him. Free and clear, the girl ran past Olivera to join Barry and LJ who, now with the last of the survivors away, dived inside and pulled the concealed door closed.

"Let's Go!" Jill cried, discarding the empty riffle before drawing her 9mm Biretta from its holster. Hearing the voice, Alice stopped firing and turned to Valentine in time to watch a sniper's round suddenly explode through the woman's side. Surprised by the wound, Jill never screamed. In a state of shock, her hand automatically moved to cover the hole as a wash of hot blood gushed forth, carrying with it the black gore that was the remnants of her insides. Blood touched Jill's lips and she looked up at Carlos, and then Alice before crumpling to the ground in a still heap.

The sight couldn't have hit Alice harder if she had been the one shot, transfixed by the awful tableau she dropped the smoking MP5K. So another one of her friends was dead and cold…

"Alice!" Carlos's shout mingled with the cold metallic click of a priming rifle and both sounds caused the woman to look up and see an Umbrella soldier dangling from one of the ropes not a 20cm from her and pointing a FAMAS right between her eyes.

"Don't move." He ordered, his voice distorted by the black breathing apparatus that his face from view. Alice didn't even blink, without a trace of fear she knocked the automatic aside and then struck with a lightning fast blow to the throat, breaking his neck like a twig. Feeling in no way like a grave robber, she took the weapon from the corpse and then without a look back, she ran to Carlos.

"What kept you?" He asked before they both took off through the doors. Still trying to recover from the massacre, no Umbrella troops made to stop them as they dashed through the maze of halls. Alice never asked where they were going, instead trusting in Olivera's skills to get them clear of this place of death. She now knew what she must do, fore there was an evil in the world that had to be cut from it, but she could only do it alone…

* * *

><p>"Fuck…" Jill gasped, blinking past the blackness as a fire crept through her veins from the gapping injury. This was far from the first time she'd been shot, hell S.T.A.R.S members collected scars like children collect stamps, but this was defiantly the first time she'd been hit by such a large calibre. The wound it left was immense and she could practically feel her life slipping away in the crimson tide which bled out of her.<p>

In the back of her mind, she knew she only had a few minutes of life left. She'd seen battle wounds like hers before and death had almost always been the result, it would be best if she just relaxed and let it come to her in the depths of a dream. Only Jill Valentine wasn't the type to just die in her sleep, she intended to fight until the very end; even if the fight was impossible to win.

Dimly, she was aware of more Umbrella soldiers entering the warehouse, some sliding down the cables while others climbed through the windows and set up a perimeter. They were keeping their distance however, and the fact that they were wary of her even when she was obviously dying made Jill's blue lips turn up in a weak smile. She quickly lost count of how many of the Corporation's mercenaries entered the former safe-house, her vision grow so weak that she couldn't so much as tell where one began and another ended until one finally stepped forward.

Like a grim Spector, the soldier slowly walked forward until he was standing over her dying form. Absentmindedly, Jill couldn't help but wonder how this bastard hadn't been killed off long ago. Although dressed in the black gear, he was larger and much stockier than his counterparts, practically massive by the average man's standards he'd have stuck out like a sore thumb in a fire fight.

"So this is Jill Valentine, at last we meet." Said a distorted voice before the soldier reached up and pulled the breathing apprentice from his face to reveal a sight that made Jill gasp in horror. "I am Albert Wesker, chairman of the Umbrella Corporation, at your service."

Jill felt a sickness rising in her gut that had nothing to do with the bullet hole as she looked up at the man, taking in his bone white skin and bleached blonde hair with a feeling of disgust. A pair of dark lensed sunglasses hid his eyes but she could already feel the coldness of his stare on her skin, touching her with all the warmth of a sheet of ice. "Wesker, I thought you were dead…" She gasped weakly, trying to ignore the blood on her breath as she pushed herself up.

She'd hoped that her words might encore some sort of reaction from the man, but to her disgust he only grinned at her. "The reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated." Dr Isaacs walked through the wall of soldiers, the cuts on his face still red from where the glass had cut him just hours earlier but his smile was no less confident as he presented a large titanium carrying case to the man. "But that is something you and I shall now share, because you see Miss Valentine, I have decided that you shall be the first subject of a very special project." With that, the Dr opened up the case and revealed something that made the dying woman's eyes grow wide with horror.

* * *

><p>Being as quiet as mice, Alice and Carlos hustled through the labyrinth of shipping containers and broken machinery. Moving as fast as he could manage, they were careful to keep out of sight of the sweeping patrols that were combing the estate. It wasn't easy, their way was full of minor obstacles that they had to either cross or navigate round and the smooth walls of steel offered them little cover. If they were caught here, they'd have little chance of making it out unscathed. With that thought in mind, Alice made sure to keep a ready finger on the trigger of her stolen FAMAS rifle as she watched the winding path ahead of them with a keen eye.<p>

"The rendezvous point is on the other side of this junk yard." Carlos said before slamming a fresh magazine into his Uzi. From every corner they could hear distant gunshots ringing out as some of the surviving resistance members engaged in desperate fire fights with Umbrella Troops and it was clear he wanted to go and help, but every time they got near the night suddenly fell silent and there was no need to wonder about who had won as Umbrella very kindly left the bullet ridden bodies where they fell. "If we keep heading east and try to avoid the patrols..." A chilling scream suddenly rang out from further down their path before being silenced in a hail of gunfire "Or maybe a little longer."

Holding their breath, Carlos and Alice shouldered their weapons and cautiously Inched forwards. The way ahead was hidden by a sharp bend but Alice could smell the aroma of blood and gun powder on the air and she could hear men whispering orders. It was impossible to tell how many blocked their path from where they were however, so she signalled Carlos to stay where he was with a quick hand signal before taking a step forward. Flattening herself against the wall of containers, she took in a nerve steadying breath before quickly peering round and then retracting her head before anyone had a chance to see her. Things defiantly did not look good. Not ten steps away was a large expense of open land that was practically teaming with Umbrella soldiers.

"Is there another way round?" She asked Carlos as he came up behind her.

"Not unless we go back to the warehouse." He said with no trace of humour as he shook his head. "Can we fight a way through?" Alice didn't want to answer. There had to be at least twenty of ballistic clad soldiers before, even together there was small chance they'd be able to kill them all and even if they did, the rest of the Umbrella strike team would be alerted by the noise and then they'd be swamped by the fuckers.

Hoping to find another solution, she glanced round just in time to see an officer walk through the troops and start barking orders. When he was done, the mercenaries suddenly began to disperse.

"They're leaving," she said excitedly, looking back at her companion with a smile on her lips.

"That's great, so can we get out of here please?"

Realising they weren't out of the woods just yet; she turned back to the space and watched the soldiers leave. This would need to be timed just right… "Let's go."

As quiet as the not so dead, they ran from the safety of the shadowed bend, across the open space to the avenue opposite them. At any moment they expected to hear the call of alarm or the short of a rifle so the pair didn't stop to see if they'd been spotted before taking off into the darkness. They ran flat out, not resting or speaking until they caught sight of vehicles in the distance.

"Just a bit further…" gasped Carlos, his voice now carrying an air of urgency. He was tired from trying to keep up with the seemingly inexhaustible woman and desperately wanted to stop for a moment to catch his breath but realising just how close they were to getting away from the slaughter, he pushed himself a little harder. There'd be plenty of time to rest later.

Alice suddenly stopped, her eyes growing wide as she looked up ahead to where the safety waited for them. She so badly wanted to go there, to leave this place and enjoy the comfort of other people, but in her mind she had been running over everything that had happened and she knew she just couldn't. It was just too dangerous for them to take her.

"What is?" Carlos asked breathlessly, confused by her sudden stop now that they were so close. "Alice what's wrong?"

"I…I can't go with you." She said, taking a voluntary step back as she shook her head in dismissal. "I'm like a plague, everyone who's close to me dies, and I won't risk losing you too." And then before he could stop her, Alice was gone into the night like a ghost.


	2. Assault on Tokyo

Chapter 1

Assault on Tokyo

Disclaimer: I am not making any profit from this work and I do not own Resident Evil.

The target was moving slowly, the decomposing limbs hindering its motions as it hobbled between the skeletal ruins of cars in search of something only its death rotten brain could understand. Unable to see in the low light, it often stumbled blindly into the car it was trying to go around and didn't notice the deafening shot which rang out less than half a mile away. Understanding nothing, it turned its head at the sound of a window breaking but any thoughts it may have had were silenced quickly when the Sharpshooter's high calibre round hit its head, ripping the top half of its skull away and splattering the car in a spray of black gore.

Watching the skeletal body crumple to the floor, Minase Kimokora couldn't help but smile, "Biohazard Terminated."

"So I saw, nice shooting." said Toshi, his voice crackling in the ear piece as he gave the other sniper's kill confirmation. It made Minase grin, Toshi was always a sore loser and he couldn't resist twisting his rifle to the side to watch his partner's distress. The night scope bathed the area in a fluorescent green yet to his dismay, the man wasn't about to indulge him. Instead he gave a brisk thumb up. _'Cheeky bastard.'_

"That's my lead three to one." He said, unable to resist zooming in slightly to watch the smile vanish from the man's face. They'd played this game often; it was one of the few perks of being on night watch and the fact the loser had to buy the winner a glass of Saki made it all the sweater. Nothing was better than a glass of warm Saki after a cold night watch.

"Yea well the night is young, and there are plenty more fish in the sea." Toshi remarked before swivelling his gun around in search for more infected. His words were designed to bolster his confidence but they'd both played this game enough to know that it was hard to recover from being two kills down. "Hey I got one in the fish market, how about double or quits on this kill?"

Smirking, Minase angled his gun on the remnants of what had once been one of the busiest fish markets in the city. Now however, only ghosts and the infected remained. The stalls which had once been filled with fresh and salted fish were nothing more than piles of rotten and broken timber and everywhere he looked was corpses. It wasn't hard for him to find Toshi's target. The creature was slumped over the first corpse Minase had shot that night and he could see that it was too busy feasting on the infected flesh to notice it was being targeted by the Umbrella snipers.

Watching the Biohazard cannibalising the remains filled Minase with an anger only their foul kind could stir within him. He hated the infected with a raw passion, he had only been a raw recruit in the Umbrella military when the outbreak hit Tokyo but that had been enough to earn his family a home inside the underground facility, only the infected had beaten him to his house. He couldn't have wife, she had already been devoured, her lifeless body lying sprawled across the entrance hall as their children's screams tore through the walls. He'd run to his daughters' room to find a crazed woman ripping at their throats and they'd died in his arms; now he saw their faces in every one he killed.

Lining up the sights of his rifle, he took care to correct for wind resistance as he rested his finger on the trigger. In his mind he pictured the look of horror that had stained his daughters' faces as they were being eaten alive as he began to squeeze the metal. Toshi's high pitched cry bellowed through the ear piece at a deafening volume, its impossibly high pitch making Minase throw back his head and grunt in displeasure as he jerked the communicator out of his ear.

"Toshi?" he asked, his ears ringing loudly as he grabbed the gun and swung around to point it at his partner's nest. However the Barrett M82 was too large a riffle to move quickly in such cramped conditions and by the time he'd set it up, whatever had happened was already over. "Toshi, are you all right? Report! What's happening?" The com stayed dead.

Zooming in on the sniper's nest, Minase was dismayed to find it empty with only the long barrelled riffle to account for Toshi's presence ever being there. '_Damn it! Where is he?' _His heart was racing, the thunderous drumming bellowing in his ears and almost deafening him to a low rustle of movement.

Looking up from the night scope, Minase turned his head over his shoulder towards the sound. There was nothing there, yet just as he was about to turn back to his search for Toshi, he heard the whisper of movement on his other side. With honed sniper reflexes he dropped the heavy Barrett and drew his side-arm before swinging about in a single fluid motion, yet again he found nothing. The nest was deserted, however this time Minase wasn't going to be so easily dissuaded and as he starred down the barrel of his M9, he caught a flicker of movement in the gloom.

"Toshi?"

No one answered, so with his finger hanging over the Beretta's trigger, he began creeping forward. Something wasn't right, it was suddenly so quiet and Minase could practically feel something watching him as he moved across the nest. He should have felt safe stationed, the better part of a mile up, on the roof of a building which could only be accessed from even deeper underground, within the bowls of an impenetrable fortress, yet he felt anything but. There was something up here with him, he was sure of it.

There was a blind turn before him where the building ended, whatever it was would be beyond it. Taking in rasping breaths, he stilled himself for whatever it might be before wheeling around the corner…to find it bare and empty.

His brow wrinkling in confusion, Minase waited, his eyes scanning the darkness and depths of every shadow for any flicker of movement as his heart thundered. Only when he was convinced that he must have been seeing things did he turn back to his rifle, and come face to face with the last thing he could have ever imagined.

A woman was standing toe-to-toe with him, she was Caucasian with lustreless auburn hair which had been oiled back and tied into a tight bun yet her eyes were a brilliant shade of sapphire and had intensity to them the likes of which he had never seen before. Dressed in a black latex body suit, she reminded him of the Ninjas of ancient Japan and he struggled to make sense of this unusual turn in events until a searing pain suddenly ripped across his stomach.

The sensation burned as if a fire had been set in his flesh and he stumbled back as one hand dropped to the wound. His ballistic armour was torn and as he reached beneath it the temperature began to rise. His skin was wet and he could feel a large gash where his belly button had once been, ropes of rubbery intestine were slipping from his gut and he realised with a start that he had been disembowelled like a fish. Her hand moved and he was horrified to see that she was holding a very sharp sword, the single edged blade glittering black in the low light, glittering with his blood.

Feeling his skin go whiter than snow, Minase made to lift his side-arm but the pistol suddenly felt heavier than a block of stone and his arm hung uselessly at his side as he fell to his knees. Without uttering a word, the woman suddenly brought her weapon down in an arc that sent a streak of blood across the wall as the sniper's head bounced across the floor.

* * *

><p>"This is command central, sentries 1 and 2 you should have delivered your report two minutes ago, is something wrong? Sentries 1 and 2 Responded!" Ordered the technician, visibly flustering as the link remained deathly silent. New to the communication hub and anxious to avoid making a mistake, he seemed to be taking the silence as a personal affront. Yet it was with certain resentment that he turned to report the problem to his commanding officer. "We've lost contact with sentries 1 and 2, sir"<p>

Standing in the centre of the command point's platform, the officer turned to the technician with a startled expression. Middle aged and growing fat with laziness, he bustled over awkwardly to where the operator sat. Like some over grown pigeon, he peered over the man's shoulder at the computer screen, examining it with furtive rodent eyes as if the answer lay right there beneath the idiot's nose. However if it did then he must have been an idiot of the same like as he saw nothing afoot that could cause the breakdown in communications.

"Sentry three is not responding either Sir. He was just making his report when the line went silent." A more experienced technician suddenly said, looking up from his work station to where the Duty stood in search of answers.

Unfortunately he had none to give, and in an attempt to buy time he looked anxiously from one technician to the other until finally he came up with an answer. "There must be a problem with the server, send an engineer to find the problem while runners go and collect the sentries' reports."

* * *

><p>"The preparations are almost complete, soon we can leave." Excella said confidently, her soft voice made rich and vibrant by a caecilian accent. Adorned by a heavy gold necklace and dressed in a cream coloured silken dress which clung to hourglass figure like a second skin, she couldn't off looked more at home in Wesker's private apartment. Lavishly furnished in heavy oak furniture and lit by the low light of a few dozen lamps, the chamber seemed more like a luxurious hotel penthouse than an underground bunker and it would have been an easy mistake to make if not for the apartment's lack of windows.<p>

Sprawled across the stylish leather couch like a relaxed Siamese cat, she had opted to leave her luxurious wash of onyx black hair cascading down her shoulders and it served as the only hint to their earlier dalliance across Wesker's desk. Her lover gaze no such hints as he sat across from her in a comfortable arm-chair. Dressed in an immaculate black uniform and wearing his signature sunglasses, the chairman of the Umbrella Corporation appeared more god than man.

"Good, so now your position in this partnership is secure." Wesker said, watching behind the reflective glass with a look of mild approval. However, Excella wasn't content with that and slowly got up from the couch before seductively swaying her rounded hips as she walked around Wesker's chair, her soft hand running over the leather as she did.

"Ohhh… I have my eyes set on something much bigger." Her full lips turned up in a sly smile and she took a moment to consider her words before continuing. "You'll be needing a queen, right? Someone suitable to stand by your side in your new world. I believe I've proven myself worthy, haven't I?" With that she seductively sauntered over to the king size before turning to face him as she slid back to sit on the feather soft covers, Her legs were parted, revealing all the beauty of natural treasures to Wesker's ever watchful gaze.

"Perhaps you have…" He whispered, his voice retaining something of a predatory note as he briskly stood up and advanced towards Excella, making her heart flutter with excitement. However her aspirations were foiled when a billowing alarm suddenly echoed through the facility. "Those fools." He didn't spare her a second glance as he hurried out the apartment.

* * *

><p>"Will someone turn that fucking alarm off?" The Duty officer asked hotly, drops of perspiration visibly rolling down his forehead as he began to panic. The situation had grown rapidly worse and now they'd lost contact with all the sentries and to top it all off, someone had set off the alarm. Even if this all proved to be nothing, he'd be lucky to escape with his life should Chairman Wesker find out. Just the thought of what had happened to his predecessor was enough to send a very cold chill down his spine and he couldn't help breathing a little easier when the shrill alarm suddenly died. That was until he saw the menacing figure all clad in black walking up the stairs to the hub.<p>

"Chairman Wesker…" The Duty stuttered, suddenly jumping to attention as the giant of a man stood over him. Standing at roughly six foot four, Wesker towered over every other man in sight and his impossibly broad and muscular physique, which the smartly prepared uniform could barely contain, certainly didn't help him to blend in amongst relatively stick-like Umbrella soldiers. The mere presence of the Umbrella head caused many of the technicians to stiffen with terror and their Duty officer struggled to meet his cold stare.

"Report." Barked Wesker, his voice cold and hard as he made no effort to hide the contempt with which he regarded the officer.

"Sir. A Half-hour ago we began to lose contact with some of the perimeter sentries, at first we thought it might have been a problem with the communications network but then…"

"How many have we lost?" Wesker asked, interrupting the Duty Officer's explanation as he grew impatient.

Sensing the danger of his predicament, the duty officer hesitated before answering, his voice trembling with fear. "All of them."

"And yet you wait 30minutes to tell me?"

"I…I didn't want to disturb you." The officer mumbled, he seemed to be on the verge of tears now and perhaps it was this pathetic display which saved his deplorable life as Wesker then seemed to lose all interest in him.

"Get me the surface gate." Wesker barked at the nearest technician, his voice retaining its usual steadiness as he turned to face a video screen that had suddenly buzzed into life to reveal an Umbrella Soldier. Garbed from head to toe in the black ballistic wears, it was impossible to tell just who this nameless mercenary might have been , but one look at who was on the other end of the line was enough to make him stand to attention and give a brisk salute.

"Sir! This is the Surface gate, Sir."

Wesker smiled at the familiar attitude of a professional soldier; at least he was not entirely surrounded by fools. "This is Chairman Wesker. We've lost contact with the perimeter sentries, report your situation."

"Everything is quite here sir."

"There have been no sign of Intruders?" Wesker asked, fighting to remain calm as he sought to remove any doubt from his mind. "No breach or alarm of any kind?"

"Negative, everything seems – wait …" The soldier suddenly ushered, his demeanour changing entirely as he raised an M16, its under-barrel spotlight illuminating whatever lay before him. "Oh my God, multiple targets within the perimeter..." From out of nowhere a gunshot rang out and the soldier's body crumpled to the floor, his helmet split in two by a bullet which had also sprayed his brains the monitor.

Although far from squeamish, Wesker couldn't help taking a step back as a deafening chorus of automatic fire bellowed from all directions and cut into the main gate's guard in a storm of hot lead. "Identify Targets, I repeat Identify the targets!" He called, trying to reform order amongst the panicking soldiers, however he was answered only by a fresh hail of gunfire, and the pained screams of the dying. And then he saw it, a scant flash of pale flesh in the distance. "Blow the surface charges." The command made every set of eyes look up from their screen, but only one had the courage to say something, or perhaps it was stupidity…

"Sir…" The duty officer said, his voice returning as he got a second wind of courage to speak up for what was right. "Our men are still up there, you cannot…" His words died as the Umbrella chairman pulled out a gleaming Desert Eagle from the within the breast of his uniform and without and even looking up, shoot him between the eyes. At point blank range, the heavy calibre round blew the Duty Officer's head clean off and what was left fell to the Hub's floor in a rapidly forming puddle of gore.

"Would anyone else like to be heard?" No one spoke. Fearful of joining the Duty Officer, the technicians quickly began typing away at their stations in a desperate race to arm the surface charges before Chairman Wesker decided who next to kill.

It happened so fast not a soul on the surface could have run. An explosion the colour of the sun ripped up from beneath the painted concrete of Shibuya square and painted the night sky in a furious orange and yellow light. Watching the scene on the monitor, Wesker felt the hint of a smile grace his lips up as a second and a third then reached up into the sky with the same devastating force. Then the picture suddenly died as the surface camera was disintegrated in a fourth blast.

Smug in his confidence, Wesker waited for the technicians to update him on the situation. It would take a few minutes; the heat from the blast would distort the satellite signal and render thermal scans useless. He could afford to wait, nothing on earth, biological or otherwise, could have survived that.

"Movement!" A technician suddenly cried, causing Wesker's smile to vanish as he turned to face the man who'd spoken. "Eh…Multiple targets."

"How many?" Wesker demanded before storming over to stand over the beeping workstation and its bewildered operator. To his dismay, the screen showed multiple figures emerging from the burnt out wrecks of Shibuya Buildings

"Twenty…no thirty… no…" The man couldn't keep count as more and more of the hostile force emerged from their shelters and advanced towards the main Gate.

"They are heading for the entrance; I want three security teams at that elevator. Now!"

* * *

><p>The entrance hall of the Tokyo Facility was a towering chamber made of steel and concrete. Its walls were bare except for the red and white heptagon of Umbrella and rows of heavily armoured vehicles were lined up along them like soldiers waiting deployment. The main elevator shaft from the surface led down to here, hidden from sight in a concealed corner and covered by a reinforced blast door, it should have been impregnable.<p>

Chairman Wesker's order had completely circled the facility in seconds and security teams had been in the hall moments after the command sounded. Carrying heavy bullet proof shields and armed to the teeth with great Howa-89 Machine guns, they stormed into the entrance chamber in their dozens. Taking up position at the mouth of the corner, they locked their defences together to form a shield wall that surrounded the blast door as the screech of the descending elevator punctured the tense silence.

For many of the Umbrella Soldiers, it was the longest couple of seconds of their lives. Few of their number knew the true nature of what had happened on the surface level and those that did didn't believe it. It was just too impossible to be true.

There was a rustle of metal as a figure slipped almost silently from an air shaft and dropped behind the Umbrella Troops; however they didn't hear it over the sound of their own drumming hearts. The Elevator was stopping; the only thing standing between them and its murderous occupants was a steel door that happened to be more than 10-inches thick. With a hiss of exchanging air, the blast door began to slide open. It was empty.

For a moment, the mercenaries could only look at each other, confused and unsure of what to do next. Then they heard it, a light patting, a sound that was almost too soft for them to hear, and so erratic it resembled the pita-patta of a running mouse, or a stalking feline. It was only by chance that one of them happened to glance back and see the figure all dressed in black coming at them. Startled, he ushered in a breath to shout the alarm but all that came out was chocked gasp and a spray of blood as a Shuriken Star became lodged deep in his throat. He fell back dead just as two other projectiles felled his mercenary brothers.

The surprise attack threw the Umbrella soldiers into a state of chaos and as they struggled to turn about with the heavy gear encumbering them, Alice barrelled into them. In one fluid motion, she drew the two Katanas that were scabbarded across her back and attacked with a lightning sweep that carved into the first two guards, the razor sharp blades cleaving through Kevlar like it was paper and disembowelling them both. Carrying the motion through, she brought the swords up and used backhanded swings to foul the ones behind, chopping into their ribs and sending up a shower of blood and gore from the ruptured cavities.

The Umbrella Soldiers fell before her like threshed wheat and spinning on her heel, she ran up one of the shields and jumped over the heads of the remaining men in the barricade. With the swords out stretched, she twisted her body around in mid-flight and carved a hole in the tightly packed mercenaries before landing gently on her feet. Two of the soldiers were already coming at her however, yet she didn't so much as bat an eye lash before jumping forward to meet them, ducking beneath a clumsy punch before lancing the gore splattered long swords forward and impaling both men on the finely honed steel.

It wasn't over however, all around her the Umbrella troopers were coming back to their senses and she only had time to pull one of the swords from the limp corpse before every gun in the hall was trained on her. Not bothering to wait for a command, the soldiers unleashed a salvo of hot lead at the woman, the billowing resonance echoing cacophonously around the subterranean hall as heavy shells slammed into the walls and spat great chunks of concrete across the floor. With no chance to attack, Alice was forced to run and wheeled around before taking flight.

Unable to get a clear shot at her, the mercenaries kept firing, the spent cartridges clattering to the tiled floor in their hundreds as the glowing rounds ricocheted in every direction. Powdered stone and splintered metal fell in thick clouds as the bullets sought out fleeing Alice, only she was too fast and one fell short before she suddenly dived under the cover of a wall. Recognising this as this their first real chance of cornering the agile woman, they turned all their attentions on the wall and began firing their weapons in earnest, chipping away the wall piece by piece until there wasn't a stone untouched by the lead.

Stopping their salvo only when their guns were on the verge of overheating, the soldiers gave it a moment before signalling one to go check it out. Understandably he hesitated, obviously still able to recall the fate of the last men to try and take the woman at close range. There was no room in Umbrella for cowardice however, and after a moment he took a cautious step forward. Making sure to keep a ready finger on the still smoking gun's trigger, he edged closer and closer to the stone before suddenly jumping around the bend, gun poised and ready.

The sword was rammed through his heart before he could even utter a word of surprise and Alice grabbed both him and his gun anyone could realise what had just transpired. Pushing the body round the bend, she turned the weapon on the soldiers and opened fire with the remaining rounds in a dreadful cascade of death.

Caught off guard once again by the woman's cunning, the soldiers tried to return fire but Alice was using the man's body as a human shield and not one shot came close to hitting her as the deadly hail cut down everything in her way. Impatiently squeezing the trigger until every one of the Kevlar clad bodies dropped to the bloody ground and lay at her feet. Looking down on the bullet ridden bodies, she couldn't help but smile lazily. Umbrella's pawns were always too easy…

"Don't move!" A voice suddenly demanded, making her look up in mild amusement as a fresh squad of security operatives lined up behind her, their heavy shields locking together as every weapon they had fixed on her and left no avenue for her escape. With a shrug she dropped the empty Howa-89 and the corpse it was attached to before turning to face the shield wall, anticipating an attack, the soldiers primed their firearms. Obviously they weren't planning on taking her alive so she left her sword embedded in the corpse's ribcage and took in a deep, steadying breath before pushing all the stress from as she tried hard to focus on a single memory. A memory of piece and warmth, of tranquillity and ease, a false memory designed to lull her into a serene calm as she reached deep within herself.

She blinked, causing her irises to dilate and the walls around her to shake as an invisible force suddenly began rocking the hall like a rumble of thunder. Panicking, the shield wall opened fire and Alice answered the challenge by sending out a psychic blast. Like a tsunami, the energy wave ripped across the hall and destroyed everything in its path, ploughing up the heavy stone flooring and crumbling the walls before slamming into the shield wall. The men cried in agony as the blast threw them off their feet and hurled them in every direction, the awful debris snapping their bones and shredding their bodies.

Only when every last one of the troopers was dead did the dust start to settle, the ravaged bodies of the dead falling in bloody heaps atop the rubble as Alice walked forward he dazedly. The chamber was a wreck in the blast's aftermath and she stumbled almost blindly over the mix of twisted metal and gore splattered stone until the rustle of approaching footsteps brought her back from the world of dreams. More Umbrella soldiers were coming; she could already hear the officers barking orders to shoot to kill…

A bullet suddenly slammed into her back, hot as the sun it tore through her Lycra body suit and blew away her heart in a fountain of gore. Throwing back her head, she tried to cry out in agony but two more shots silenced her death cry. Her strength vanished as the gore flowed from her ruined torso and she fell heavily to the floor, what remained of her life's blood pooling all around her.

The security reinforcements burst into the chamber to find the intruder dead on the floor, a lone survivor standing over her body. Not sure what to make if this startling revelation, the soldier's exchanged smug looks before coming to stand round the body.

"Now Boys…" The voice made the trooper's look up in surprise, their heads shooting round to where three identical copies of the woman were stood. "is that any way to treat a lady?" Terror gripped the Soldier's in its cold fist and they were unable to move as the ones on the right and left stepped forward. While the Alice in the centre was armed with another pair of Katanas, these two were armed with TMP sub-machine guns and they raised the weapons with a cool efficiency before pulling the triggers and emptying the magazines into the still clueless soldiers.

* * *

><p>"Dammit!" Wesker cursed, losing his composure for a moment as he watched the facility's security force get annihilated by the women. He'd underestimated these creatures, they were clearly more persistent then Isaacs had led him to believe. He'd sent in his best men and hoped to get the better of the Alice's with a numerical advantage, only they'd been cut to ribbons and now more of the bitches were appearing.<p>

On every monitor, he watched as the Alice clones dispatched what remained of his security force, their superior agility allowing them to get around the troopers' arsenal and stay one step ahead in the fight. Suddenly, some of the monitors turned to static and Weskler's eyes darted from screen to screen until finally he found the problem; one of the Alices was shooting the hidden cameras. Cursing again, he was about to give the technicians new orders when an explosion rocked the atrium and caused many of the operators to bolt from their seats in fright.

"Stay at your stations!" He demanded, irritated by their cowardice and the apparent lack of efficiency from the top-price mercenaries he'd employed; an army of cooks could have put up a better fight. "Flood the entrance level with nerve gas." Too afraid of the chairman to argue, they hastily began typing the orders but it wasn't enough.

"I'm verifying intruders in sections one through five, seven and eight." Said A tech, his voice shaking slightly as he felt the chairman's cold gaze set on him. "Also there are reports of gunfire in ten and eleven."

"I want all security protocols to be put in full effect. Lockdown all elevators immediately, seal the internal blast doors and activate security turrets… and I want damage reports."

* * *

><p>The security here was better than at the others. The Alice clones had thought their way through dozens of these Umbrella facilities but this was the first time they had found themselves halted half way through. Despite the weight of their assault, the few surviving members of the security force had regrouped in several easy to defend locations and were now taking the fight back.<p>

Furiously squeezing the triggers of her TMPs as she ran, Alice clone Gama worked desperately to dismantle one of the barricades. She was in an office of some sort, deserted computer stations and rumpled desks were scattered everywhere she looked and the Umbrella troopers had formed a blockade in its centre. Explosive flashes burst from every part of the embattled defender's barrier as they tried to pin her down with surprising fields of fire but like her sister in the Entrance chamber, Gama was too fast for their bullets to hit. But neither could she hit them…

Unable to aim, she blasted off rounds that harmlessly bounced off the Kevlar armour. Occasionally she got lucky and one of the rounds would hit a soft mark but they were few and far between. Too make matters worse, her extended magazine had almost run dry.

Needing cover to reload, she dived behind a stone column, pressing herself flat against it as thunderous salvo of lead slammed into the other side. Ejecting both spent clips; she rammed a fresh pair inside the guns and was about to return fire when she suddenly noticed that another one of her sisters was pinned behind another column. Good, she could do with the extra help. Judging by the distasteful look on her face, her sister had come to the same conclusion and they tipped their heads in mutual readiness before stepping out of cover and opening up a barrage of fire on the barricade.

Caught by the duo's attack, some of the Umbrella troopers were cut down but many managed to withstand the blow and returned fire with such ferocity that Gama and her sister were abruptly forced back under cover.

"Fuck!" Gama cursed as a stray bullet narrowly missed blowing her skull apart. Casting her eyes around, she suddenly noticed something strange about the wall facing her and her sister, it appeared to be breaking under the deadly hail of bullets. _'No not breaking… shattering!' _It was a tinted window which had resembled stone in the low light, but now its true nature was for all to see and it gave her an idea.

Shooting a glance at her sister, she holstered one of her guns before withdrawing a small incendiary grenade and holding it out for her to see before nodding at the window. Getting the idea, she withdrew her on grenade and on the count of three, they stepped out and hurled the bombs at the still firing soldiers. Taken aback, the mercenaries stopped their onslaught for a moment as they peer down dumbly at the grenades. It gave the Alices their chance and with a yell they burst out of hiding and made for the window, their TMPs flashing as a blistering hail of bullets exploded from the muzzles.

Realising the danger, the troopers tried to flee but most were cut down as the sisters made the dash to the window. Weakened by the barrage, the tinted glass shattered beneath their charge and gravity seized them in its clutches and pulled them down. Caught in free fall, Gama used her free hand to reach inside her gear and pull free a small pod that was teethed to her belt by a retractable cord. In a practised move, she whirled her body around and threw the pod skyward; its miniature body opening into a grappling hook as the internal sensors locked onto a bean and pulled it to it. Grabbing the pole like a striking viper, the pod locked tight and wouldn't budge.

A glance told Gama her sister had done the same so without fear, they let the fall take them as the cord began to slow their descent. It was a long drop, stretching out for over half a mile, yet strangely she felt no fear. Fear was not a word she had any meaning for. There was only the mission, the mission to destroy Umbrella and now she had them clear in her sights. Over the roar of the whipping wind, she heard the grenades go off and then felt the wash of hot air on her back when a great cloud of choking black smoke enveloped everything in her and her sister's wake. There was fire up their too, but Gama didn't worry, they were too far ahead of the blast to have any fear of getting burned.

Far below she could make out the communications centre, a collection of small peapod like hubs that were all gathered together around one master station. That was her target. The only problem was a small army of men, no bigger than ants to her now, happened to be swarming all over it.

Snatching up her second gun even as the whipping wind blew full force against her, she opened up a furious stream of fire that rained down on the unsuspecting spectators below like a deadly lead hailstorm. The howling winds silencing the TMPs' clamorous retort along with the screams of the dying as she and her sister dropped through the Atrium like a pair of latex garbed raptors on the hunt.

Grabbing whatever weapons they could find, the technicians that were still able to move started to return fire; however Gama and her sister were descending too fast for their eyes to focus and the bullets flew buy the clones harmlessly. The technicians' poor shooting made Gama want to laugh, this was going to be easier than shooting fish in a barrel.

Her guns ran dry the moment before the tether pulled tight and she twisted her body over to break the quick release before free falling for the last few metres. By all rights the death-defying fall should have killed her and left her body as nothing more than gore splattered ruin, but when she landed in the command centre's master hub, it was with all the nimble grace and ease of a panther. All eyes were on her in an instant and taking advantage of the techs' stunned disbelief, she rammed her last two clips into thee TMPs before turning them on…

Her eyes widened as she saw the immense figure all dressed in black and wearing shades. There was no mistaking that dark, fearsome exterior and her heart suddenly burned with renewed hatred as she recognised him as being Albert Wesker, her primary target and eternal nemesis.

She would have shot the Umbrella CEO right then and their but he showed remarkable speed for a man who appeared to be made up almost entirely of muscle and dived behind a desk before her sub-machine guns could draw level. However before she could go after him, a firestorm erupted all around her as the technicians came to their senses and opened fire on Gama. They may have been bad shots, but in this tight a quarter, skill didn't matter. Even if they couldn't hit her, a ricocheting bullet could kill her just as easily as a true one.

Moving faster than any human could imagine, she whirled around and began firing manically at the nearest targets, taking them out in the blink of an eye before turning on the next. They may have had her outnumbered, but Gama was the faster and she delighted in showcasing that fact by mercilessly slaughtering the Umbrella staff as if she were an unstoppable killing machine. With every hit, a fresh spray of gore splattered across the procaine white floor of the central Hub and it wasn't long before a mass of bullet riddled bodies lay crumpled and twisted at her feet, their death cries still echoing around the atrium as smoky tentacles floated up from her guns.

Breathing a little harder than she had been before the massacre, Gama surveyed her work fondly until a figure suddenly lunged up from the shadows. It was Wesker, and he was armed. Recognising the danger posed by his two gleaming Desert Eagle Magnums, she spun on her hip, trying to escape the weapon's range as she brought her TMPs up to bear and fired. Her heart seeming to die the instant the machine guns kicked back with a dull '_click_'. The magazines were empty.

Too late she realised just how many bullets she'd used to kill the technicians and as she looked up, there was just enough time for her to catch the smile was turning his lips up before the burning heat of two heavy calibre rounds slammed into her heart.

* * *

><p>Wesker watched the Alice clone die with great satisfaction, it felt good to cut lose after four years of wearing the tight fitting suit of an executive. While there were many rewards to be the chairman of the world's largest commercial entity, nothing could compare to the thrill of the firing line. And the knowledge that he had so easily vanquished a dangerous enemy made the moment all the sweater.<p>

Kicking aside a technician's bloody corpse, he was about to take his leave when a long burst of automatic gunfire suddenly rang out, drawing his attention to one of the other hubs. It was the one upon which the other Alice clone had landed and to Wesker's disgust, she appeared to be having no problem taking out the men stationed there.

"Incompetent morons!" He growled as one of the technicians lost a perfectly good kill shot because he'd forgotten to take the safety off his pistol, and then was promptly shoot by one of his colleagues who seemed to forgotten the entire concept of aiming. "Must I do everything myself?" Before he could solve the problem, a low rustle of movement drew his attention back to the Corpses on the floor. To his amazement, the Alice clone was still moving.

There was little life left inside of her, with every second more and more of her life's blood was bled away and Wesker guessed she might have another minute or so before death took her completely. It would be merely a waist of a good bullet to shoot her again, but as he looked down on the crumpled form lying face down before him, he couldn't resist the urge to make her last moments as terrible as possible.

Crossing over to his adversary with long, quick strides, he approached her much the way a blood lusting predator would advance upon its dying prey and took no small pleasure from kicking her hard before using the heel of his boot to roll the body over. However it seemed the clone was not as dead as he first thought, wide awake she looked up at him with furious eyes that seemed to be looking past his shaded glasses and boring into his very soul.

"Fuck you." Gama whispered, her voice faltering under the effort to speak as blood touched her lips. Her passion pleased Wesker, he would enjoy making her cry out and beg for mercy before he made her drown in whatever was left of her blood. Something metallic fell to the ground with a dull ring and curious; he looked down and saw two incendiary grenades lying on the floor, the pins removed and detonators ticking.

The sight of the active bombs caused Wesker's grin to vanish and he turned and ran for his life. His heavy boots squelching through the thick soup of blood end entrails as he made the life or death dash across the hub, his immense bulk aligning with an impossible grace as he dived over the balcony, just a second too late.

With a deafening roar, the grenades exploded and an all-consuming cascade of fire and shrapnel swallowed up Gama's body and burnt her remains to cinders. A blinding flash followed as the blast of white hot flame tore the station apart and engulfed the flying CEO, only by the sheerest dumb luck did he sail over the threshold before the fiery wrath could completely consume him; landing with a heavy thud on the walkway below.

Struggling to his feet, Wesker winced as a savage pain shot through his leg and looking down, he saw that it had been horribly mangled by the blast. Broken and twisted beyond all recognition, Wesker had to force himself to move and he hobbled pathetically down the walkway, the echoing gunfire only adding wings to his flight.

Without a doubt, this was the most embarrassing moment of Wesker's life. Forced to flee his own high-tech fortress by an insubordinate scientist's cloned experiment, it was intolerable and he began to wish he'd never heard the notion of Project ALICE. Forcing himself to look his humiliation, he continued on yet his mind was so absorbed by this injustice that he seemed not to notice the way his bones were miraculously reknitting themselves so that he walked a little easier with every step.

Nearing gun shots rang out like a chorus of thunder in the passages but Wesker was walking like a young man again by then and scurrying through the labyrinth with ease. Thankfully his way was clear, with every remaining member of the facility busy fighting for their lives against the invading clones in the atrium; he would be saved the dirty business of having to kill his own men. Retracing the steps he knew would take him along the fastest route to the hanger, a confident smile lit up his handsome features when the electric doors before him opened up to reveal an immense chamber that's ceiling reached up all the way to the surface.

All around him, V-22 Osprey VTOL Helicopters sat, fully fuelled and waiting to be manned yet Wesker walked past them all without the slightest recognition, his gaze fixed instead on a steel door that was marked in big blood red letters, '**Private! Authorised Personnel only.**' Placing a large hand on the biometric handprint scanner that had been mounted on the wall next to the door, causing the walls to shudder as the interred mechanisms recognised his genetic markers and activated the door, revealing a darkened subterranean passage.

The passage resembled something out of a 1930s horror movie. The walls were untreated stone, rough and uneven under touch with edges sharp enough to cut through Kevlar. The air was fresh but also thick and it carried a cold morning breeze. And it was dark, very dark. With no instruments or technology fitted to light it, the tunnel was as wickedly black as the darkest ocean depths. Yet Wesker moved through it confidently, knowing rather than seeing his way through the gloom until finally he emerged in a well-lit cavern that was almost as large as the V-22s' hanger.

This was the hanger of Wesker's own personal aircraft, an immense flying wing stealth bomber that had been based on the design of a B-2 Spirit and then customized with JATO rockets and an AI unit that would serve the duties of a flight crew when activated. It was the most advanced aircraft in the world and set on top of a catapulted ramp that would launch it into a shaft to the surface, it was just waiting for him to make his escape.

Squinting against the sudden brightness of the overhanging florescent lights, he stepped into the hanger but no sooner had he done so than a figure suddenly stepped from the shadows. Acting on impulse, he raised his gun and was about to fire when he recognised it as being Excella Gionne.

"Thank God you made it Albert." She said coolly, apparently unfazed by the gun pointing at her as she stepped completely out of the shadows. Although a little dishevelled, she appeared uninjured and carried herself with that unflinching air of confidence as she approached him. In one hand she was carrying a 9mm berretta, in the other a silver carrying case containing the latest version of the T-virus. The sight of the case brought a smile to Wesker's lips, but Excella, believing it to be a sign of his affections, made the mistake of dropping it as she broke into a run before throwing her arms around him; crushing her voluptuous body against his as she held him in a tight embrace.

It was a tender moment and she was surprised when he didn't respond with the affection he had before. Instead he just stood still in her arms and after a moment; Excella looked up at him with wide tearful eyes. To her displeasure, he appeared unmoved by her show of emotion and only looked down at her with a smouldering disdain, then she felt the immense weight pushing against her lower abdomen and looked down just in time to see the barrel of his Desert Eagle angling towards her heart. "Albert?"

When the gun fired, the bullet slammed into her with all the force of an avalanche and she practically feel the lead round ripping a its way through her chest before obliterating her heart and exploding out her back in a bloody mist. There was only one pain after that and as the world began to darken, she asked "Why?"

Wesker didn't care for her sentiment and as she collapsed, he walked past without a second look. Holstering both Eagles, he scooped up the case and ran up the bomber's cargo bay ramp as a flurry of approaching voices echoed through the rocky passage. Immediately heading for the cockpit, he dashed through the cargo dock without so much as a perusing eye. Setting the sealed box down beside him as he got into the pilot's chair, he had just enough time to remotely seal the ramp before what was left of the Alice clones came running into the hanger with sub-machine gun's blazing.

Smirking triumphantly as the bullets bounced harmlessly off the plane's armour plating, Wesker ignited the engines and began the take-off procedure. The JATO rockets firing to life in an explosive inferno that turned the very rock face to crystal and he had just enough time to give the clones a jaunty salute through the cockpit's windows before pulling back on the controls to let the catapult launch the plane. The force of the take-off threw Wesker back into his seat and he could feel his teeth grating together as the bomber ran the length of the ramp before being launched into the near vertical shaft that had been especially designed for the bomber's ascension.

Exploding through the still opening blast doors, the slick plane lifted high above the ruins of Tokyo before levelling out as it set a course west. Letting the AI take over the piloting, a jubilant Wesker reached into his jacket's inner breast pocket and pulled out a remote. It was only a tiny device, considerably smaller than the palm of his hand, yet he had ensured it was kept it on his person at all times. This was the true power of an Umbrella chairman and with a flick of his thumb, he sieved through the available options until finally coming to his desired menu; **'PURGE FACILITY'**.

* * *

><p>Watching as their primary target disappeared into the tunnel; the clones let their weapons drop. This battle was over, but they'd far from lost the war. All the major Umbrella bases had been destroyed; there were only a handful of facilities Wesker could run to, he wouldn't elude them for long.<p>

A loud click suddenly cut through the silence, making the clones turn their heads to where a large box red and white painted box had been mounted on a nearby wall. The word '**Purge'** had been stamped across it in big read letters and the Umbrella logo had been embossed just above a digital timer that was rapidly counting down.

**00.10…00.09…00.08….00.07…**

"Move!" one of the clones cried, but it was already too late. Trying to get a head start over the bomb some made a run for it while the others tried desperately to open the box.

**00.06…00.05…00.04…00.03…**

Slamming the butt of their guns against the locks while some tried prying at its edges with their fingers, the clones tied everything in their power to disable the device until finally the lid crumpled. Throwing the shattered covering across the hanger, they found that the wall mounted box contained a battlefield nuclear device.

**00.02…00.01…00.00**

* * *

><p>Flying high above the clouds, Wesker watched in delight as a second sun suddenly consumed the once vibrant and fertile city of Tokyo. The wakening sky turning a bright white as the pale blue inferno reached up into the heavens and dashed away all that had ever stood there. High winds of fire and gas tossed broken metal into the sky and the shock of the expanding dome struck the bomber like thunder, the control panel shaking violently until it rose too high for the blast too touch.<p>

At this altitude, the night sky twinkled as the pre-dawn light turned its reaches a shade of pale lavender and Wesker was at last able to relax. Sinking back into the pilot's chair, he let out a shallow breath as his eyes fell closed behind the shades. It had been a long night and now he wanted to rest, even with the use of this magnificent plane it still take half a day to reach his new headquarters, his Arcadia.

In the rear of the plane, a shadow emerged from some darkened confine and the figure of a woman came forward. Dressed in the same Lycra bodysuit as the clones, she moved as silently as coming death and crept up behind Wesker without making a sound before firmly pressing the muzzle of a USP-9 against his temple.

"Any last words?" Alice asked, her voice becoming very cold as she looked down upon him with the merciless, unflinching gaze of a predator. At last the moment she had longed for had come, now was the moment she would avenge all those she had loved and lost, all those who had given their lives to stop Umbrella. She intended to enjoy it…

Irritated by the interruption, Wesker reached beneath an instrument panel to remove something before suddenly lurching out of the chair. Moving faster than any human should have been able to; he came around with one hand clasping something sharp and made to stab her neck. Thinking he had a knife, she tried to retreat but the pilot's chamber was too small for her to move freely and he jammed the weapon home before she could defend herself.

A jolt of pain shot through her as the unusually long blade cut her deeper than any knife should, but strangely that was the only pain she felt as she staggered back. Wesker made no move to stop her; In fact he seemed to enjoy watching her as she pulled the weapon out of her neck to find that it wasn't a knife. It was a stainless steel syringe.

Shocked and confused, she glared at her nemesis questioningly. Then suddenly she dropped the needle as a look of intense agony spread across her features. It was as if a fire had been set in her flesh, its deadly heat boiling her blood and dissolving her organs.

"How nice it is to finally meet the real Project Alice." Wesker said before moving to stand over her crumpled body, his eyes twinkling with merrily behind the shaded glasses as he took in the pained expression. "Hurts, doesn't it. Well I'm afraid that is only the beginning. As we speak micro-organisms are coursing through your blood stream and neutralising T-cells. So pretty soon all those powers of yours…speed…strength…accelerated healing. Well you kiss all that good bye. Put simply the Umbrella Corporation is taking back its property. I'm afraid you just didn't work out." He sniggered at the notion, clearly enjoying his opportunity to play god. "So you're being recalled."

His words flamed her anger and caused some of the pain to dissipate as she used the last of her strength to raise the USP-9. However it was much heavier than she remembered and Wesker, not willing to give her another chance, had snapped a kick into her chest before she could even bring the gun to bear. Knocked back by the incredible power of his attack, her body did a flurry of reverse summersaults as she was thrown out the cockpit and sent flying across the cargo bay before finally slamming into the air locked door and crumpling to the floor.

Dipping in and out of consciousness, she could only just muster the willpower to lift her head as Wesker came forward, his hand dipping out of sight as he reached for one of his eagles.

"What are you?" She asked in a voice that was little more than a whisper. Something was horribly wrong here, even when she had been human, Alice had been better than most and not even the Nemesis Project had been able to land a blow quite like the one Wesker had just dealt her, no human could.

"Me? Why I am what you use to be." He proclaimed, stepping into the cargo bay with his gleaming weapon drawn. His heavy footfalls echoing as he walked unhurriedly towards the fallen woman, aiming the heavy pistol between her eyes. "…Only I'm better."

Believing it to be over, Wesker paid no mind to anything other than the kill that was to come, yet Alice saw all and despite the immediate danger, she couldn't help looking past Wesker and smiling as she saw the flash of movement.

Standing over the helpless Alice, about to deliver the coup de grace, Wesker felt rather than heard the presence behind him and swinging around, he just had enough time to witness the flash of steel. Rear back, he tried to dodge the blow but the attacker was too close and instead the razor sharp blade swooped down and sliced the gun's thick barrel in two. Jumping away from his mystery assailant, he had just enough time to glance down and see that his weapon had been reduced to scrap before looking up and finding to his immense surprise that it was another Alice clone.

"Hhmmm…so it's just another one of your clones." He observed, his lips twitching into a smile as he dropped the remnants of his pistol. "I must say, you are something of a weed. As soon as I cut one of you down, another comes along to take her place; how amusing."

Not so amused, the clone leapt forward without warning, her Katana cutting a silver arc through the low light as she went at Wesker full throttle. However, the Umbrella Chairman was unfazed by her show of tenacity and stepped aside just as the blade was about to strike his cold flesh. Swinging around, the clone attacked again and again Wesker dodged it, rolling under the steel's reach as he grabbed his second Desert Eagle from its holster. When he came up, the weapon was out but she was already moving, her sword reaching out in a cut that caught the gun across the hook of its trigger guard.

The impact knocked Wesker's aim and when he fired, the bullet merely grazed her check so that a narrow cut oozed gouts of blood in its wake as for a single moment they were locked together. And then Wesker barged forward, using his weight advantage to throw her back. She stumbled, her leather boots slipping on the smooth metal floor while he recovered and took aim. Just catching herself before she fell, the clone cast her gaze around in time to glimpse Wesker smirking as he prepared to fire. With no time to think, she spun on her heel and made a frantic dash to the nearest wall. Gathering momentum, she leapt forward and literally began running up the wall. Pushing up with every step, she seemed able to defy gravity as she ran up and along smooth surface.

In the confined space of the cargo bay, the gunshot rang out as a deafening roar and her arm jerked violently when the bullet hammered against her. Strangely there was no pain, but the force of the impact made her lose balance and jump. Despite the hurried leap, she tumbled head over heels and landed nimbly with a jaguar's grace before Wesker, her arms raised as she aligned the sword in a guard, only to find that the uppermost half of the blade had been shot off to leave her with little more than a ragged stump of ineptly proportioned metal. In this state, the Katana would be of less use to her than a butter knife.

Smirking as he saw the state of her weapon, Wesker levelled the gun at the clone. In truth there was still a danger from this one, with a second sword sheathed across her back and her powers still active, she would pose a moderate threat had he not had her in his sights. However, as it was she would never have time to draw the weapon, let alone attack him with it, before he emptied the clip into her. This fight was over.

Only she was of a different opinion. With superhuman speed, the clone hefted what remained of the Katana and hurled it at Wesker, inept, stumped blade first. Surprised but still faster than the eye could see, he lashed out and swatted the sword aside with a swipe of his hand but in that single instant, when his attention was divided, she acted. Rushing forward so quickly she verged on becoming a blur, she attacked with a roundhouse kick that should have cracked his skull back, had Wesker not seen the coming danger at the last possible instant. His iron hard fist slammed against her side, cracking several of her ribs as he twisted around her blow and then stepped through with an upper cut that sent the clone reeling. Grabbing her Lycra collar, he ended the skirmish by throwing her over his collar and across the bay.

Still winded, the clone skidded across the plaiting as if it were in fact a lake of ice, and Wesker didn't wait for her to recover before firing a volley. Sparks ignited as the heavy rounds ricochet off the floor and walls as every shoot missed the free sailing clone by a hair's breadth until she finally collided with the wall. Seeing his chance, Wesker levelled his eagle for the final shot when another shot rang out like the bolt of lightning in a thunderstorm as a bullet slammed into Wesker's shoulder, spoiling his aim and giving the clone time to take cover.

Alice was back in the fight. With USP-9 raised and Wesker in her sights, she fired a perfect shot that ripped into Wesker's shoulder and made him stagger. However he regarded the wound like it was nothing, so she fired again, and then again. Nothing could explain it but although her aim was still spot on, Wesker would dodge the bullet at the last moment, his super human speed taking him from one spot to the next in the blink of an eye. And each time he did, he came at her, appearing closer and until he was almost atop her, and then he was on her.

In the merest instant he went from firing at her sheltering clone to suddenly running at her full gallop, every well worked muscle in his body practically a quiver as came at her in a thunderous burst of kinetic energy. Moving too swiftly for her to focus, he slammed past her defences and rammed a shovel hook punch to her gut that her eyes widen and spittle fly from her parted lips as she grunted in agony. Still caught in his vortex of motion, Wesker dropped to one knee and suddenly swept his leg around, taking her legs out from under her as he came back up in the midst of a reverse round house with his opposite leg. The blow caught her aerial form across the ribs and tossed her heavily against the wall.

"No!" The clone cried, emerging from her shelter with the second sword drawn and clearly with a mind to come to her weakened sire's defence. Her stupidity made Wesker smirk; only a fool brought a knife to a gun fight. He turned without warning, the smoking Eagle pistol levelled and ready as he blasted off a round that would take her head off. Only she suddenly dived forward, rolling across the floor in a tight ball as the bullet passed harmlessly over her. Unmoved by her prowess, he corrected his aim and fired again as she rose up. A flash of silver burnt in the darkness and then her sword was there, cutting across the bullet's path before it could touch her and slicing the round in two.

The separate halves of the bullet flew in opposite directions as the clone curled up to her full height, the impossible sharp Katana spiralling around her in a deadly helix as she stepped forward and then whirled the sword down. Wesker darted round the descending blade but his gun was empty, the magazine spent in that last hail of fire, so instead he stepped through with a punch that hit with such force it pulverised her ribs and ripped through her chest cavity. Blood gushed from the clone's lips as the blow broke her lungs and destroyed her heart before tearing from her back in a grisly shower of gore.

Already dead, the clone hung their limp and unmoving as the look of triumph crossed Wesker's face; that had been all too easy. When the sword slipped from her lifeless fingers, he tossed the ruined corpse aside, regarding the bloodied form with a look one might usually reserve for something less than human before turning back to Alice. Near comatose, the stricken woman could only struggle for breath as she returned a look that was vibrant with hatred. It was time they ended this tiresome game.

He was upon her in an instant, standing over her exhausted body like some grim spectre of death. An ominous click rang out as he shoved his last clip inside the gun before pressing the weapon against her forehead. "Now where were we?" He asked mindfully, unable to resist taunting her before finally putting her out of his misery. "Ah yes, I believe I was about to kill you."

"Wait…" Alice gasped, blood touching her lips as she tried to form the words. "Please wait."

"Last words?" Wesker asked smugly, more than a little amused by the concept. "Or do you feel like begging for your life, I am a generous man you know."

Alice would have laughed if she could must the energy. She wasn't afraid to die, everyone has die sooner or later and she'd had her taste of it enough to know death couldn't possibly be as bad as what her life had become. In truth she was only pissed off that she wouldn't live long enough to see this beast pay for his crimes. But as much as it made her stomach turn to admit it, she did owe him something. "Thank you."

"For killing you?"

"No…"Alice gasped, the pain in her side only growing worse as she tried to speak. "For making me human again."

"My pleasure…" Wesker said before beginning to squeeze the magnum's trigger. Suddenly an alarm began to sound, filling the bomber with its harsh song and drawing Wesker's attention back to the cockpit. What he saw made that infernal smirk vanish.

The clone's first sword, which he had so carelessly swatted aside, was stuck in the AI's control panel, shutting the autopilot off. Too make matters worse without the programme to guide it, the bomber had been steadily losing altitude, throwing it on a collision course with the snow-capped peaks of Mount Fuji. At the ship's present speed it would be only a matter of moments until they crashed. Forgetting Alice in lour of the much greater danger, Wesker turned away from the exhausted woman and made a desperate, life or death dash to the cockpit. Despite his incredible speed however, Wesker arrived at the controls too late to save them, instead he got to watch in horror as the bomber's nose collided with the rock face before a monstrous ball of flames suddenly reached out and consumed him.

In the cockpit, Alice felt the collision jar the ship's metal skeleton before the roar of the protesting metal almost deafened her, and then she was air born. Hurled forward as the bomber was tossed about wildly across the mountain face, she had just enough time to hear her Wesker's agonized scream before a great fire ball exploded in front of her and devoured over half the ship. Then suddenly all went back as her head struck something hard and she fell into a great void of blackness.

* * *

><p>It must have been the cold that roused Alice. It was a very cold morning and the icy winds crept across her body like Death's chilling embrace. Barely conscious but still alive, her eyes fluttered open but her brain was still too shell-shocked from the blast to discern anything other than a bright light. Perhaps she was dead, but if this was heaven, why was it so cold?<p>

In the distance she could hear a flock of Bush Warblers singing their song; it was a peaceful tune and an enjoyable contrast to the usual melancholy of her life as bit by bit, her senses gradually returned. At first her world view was just a blurry collage of indifferent colours and shapes, but then it was sharpened and defined as fresh colours blossomed and bloomed until she saw everything clearly.

The morning sky had turned from deep violet to a deep cerulean blue as the sun rose ever higher in its arch; the day had worn on some time since she had fallen unconscious. The landscaping was mostly dark rock but the brittle skeletons of a few dozen trees were scattered around her and she could just see the ruin of Tokyo in the distance, its remains still smoking from the blast. All around her broken pieces of metal burned, the fires warming her slightly against the freezing winds that blow across the rocky face of Mount Fuji. Not far away, the broken wreck of the bomber was still burning, the once magnificent armaments turned black as ash as it lay crippled and broken on the mountain side. Without a doubt, she'd been lucky this time.

There was no way Wesker could have survived, but every one of her instincts told her she had to confirm the kill, that that bastard was too wily a beast to leave up to mere conjecture. She had to be sure, to see his burnt husk with her own two eyes, before believing him to be dead for sure.

Resolute in her decision, Alice reluctantly got to her feet, staggering slightly as she momentarily lost balance. Her body was heavier than it should have been, and the sudden movement caused her head to throb painfully; it was obviously going to take a while for her to get reacquainted with being human again.

In her concussion hindered state, the climb down to the wreck was steep and dangerous. The rocky ground was treacherous under her boots and winds that were approaching gale force threatened to throw her to the ground with every unsure step she took. It was a precarious journey and one that seemed to take forever as she methodically worked her way down the valley to the bomber.

Despite its once illustrious armour plating, little remained of the ship but scrap metal; its major components having either been destroyed by the gunfire or eaten away by the fiercely raging flames. Its wings were gone, torn away in the crash, and whatever remained of the engines could be seen burning on the outskirts of the crash site. Only the main compartment had remained largely intact, but whatever remained of the cockpit had been buried beneath the rocks while the mangled tail was almost standing vertical.

It towered over her and the surrounding rocks but Alice could just make out a thick column of dark smoke rising from its base and as she approached, treading as carefully as she dared over the lose stones, she found a crack just large enough for her to squeeze through. It was a tight fit but miraculously she managed to get through, her Lycra bodysuit protecting her skin from any jagged pieces of metal that might have reached out to claim her as she passed before stepping into the chocking blackness of the cargo bay.

Lit only by faint traces of ghost light and thick with the unrelenting smoke, the cargo bay proved to be as inhospitable as the mountain side it rested on. Coughing violently, Alice had to cover her nose and mouth to keep from suffocating in the pool of noxious gas and the smoke was so dense, she could barely see her hand in front of her face and so was forced to rely on fractured memories to navigate her way through the cloud. However, even when she was clearing the veil's depths, the fragments of ghost light offered her little assistance. Reaching into her belt, she quickly equipped herself with a small torch that flooded the ruined ship with a brilliant beam of light when activated. Narrow but powerful; the beam of light confirmed Alice's first assumption that the Cargo bay was empty.

Sweeping the light across the cargo bay, Alice suddenly felt her breath catch in her throat as the beam fell on something that was neither part of the wall or floor. It might have once been a body but the carbonised remnants had been burned and blackened beyond all recognition.

Unable to tell if it was Wesker's smouldering corpse or just another ill shaped rock, she crept forward, trying to be mindful as she did of whatever might be underfoot. The charred remains reeked with the pungent odder of burning flesh and Alice had to fight against gagging as she reached out. Hot to touch, the effigy began to crumble under her fingers and it only just held together as she rolled it over.

"No…" Alice whispered disbelievingly as she stared down at a face that, despite being half burnt away, was almost the mirror image of her own. Horrified by the sight of her murdered clone's remains, she staggered back and in doing so, almost lost her footing as she tripped on something that had been half hidden on the floor. Whirling around with her torch levelled, she was relieved to find it was just her USP-9.

Reaching down to reclaim the Heckler & Koch, Alice felt a strange sense of ease filling her. It had once belonged to Carlos Olivera, before his death in the Nevada desert he'd taken her aside and given it to her and made her promise to use it to bring down Umbrella. It was the last thing she had to remember the only man she'd ever loved. Preoccupied with her former Lover's gun, Alice never noticed the moving darkness or the heavy thuds of approaching footfalls.

"It seems I underestimated you Alice," The voice cut through her harmonica moment like the crack of a gunshot and Alice raised the gun in the voice's direction before angling the torch towards it. The bright beam revealed something that was far from concerting. "Even as a human, your abilities far exceed the expectations of Dr. Isaacs."

Albert Wesker was standing in the buried cockpit's doorway, unfortunately alive though for what it mattered, he looked like he'd seen better days. His normal slick blond hair was dirty and dishevelled, his tailored uniform rumpled and torn, and burns of varying degree tarnished his once flawless skin. Yet despite it all, his shades seemed untouched by the explosion and the crash; some bastards just have all the luck.

"I'm only just getting started!" She said hotly, not really sure what else to say.

Things were not looking good. Although Alice had got Wesker in her sights, her USP-9 only had one round left and given the bastard's speed, she may as well hurl the whole gun at him for all the good that one shot would do her. He on the other hand, had her out classed in every fashion and a Desert Eagle that was fully loaded and practically calling for her blood. Yes, things were bad, and if she didn't find a way to even the odds, she'd by lying dead beside her clone before she can pull even pull the tiger…

Then she saw it, the answer to the greatest question ever asked, lying on the floor beside her clone's charred body. The sword's blade reflected the torch light, telling Alice exactly where it lay, partly submerged beneath debris between Wesker and the clone's effigy. It was quite a distance; there was no way she'd make it without a distraction.

"Now…now Alice there's no reason for us to be enemies. With Excella's death, I find myself in need of a partner, someone to rule the world by my side…" Wesker said, his burnt lip twitching as if her were about to smile at the thought. Only Alice wasn't interested.

"Go to hell!" She yelled before suddenly pulling back her arm and hurling the torch at Wesker. Turning over and over, the device shot through the air like a rock as its blinding beam of light illuminated every corner of the Cargo Bay, yet he didn't so much as bat an eye lash. In a practised motion, he made to swipe the torch from the sky but Alice beat him to the punch. Raising her gun as her heart pounded loudly in her chest, she aimed for the base of the light beam before firing her last round.

An explosion of light erupted in the Cargo bay, sending a blinding flash through the darkness as shards of glass and metal rocketed in all directions. Wesker recoiled in shock, momentarily stunned as the deadly fragments sliced into his face and Alice didn't hesitate to take advantage of his distraction by leaping to the side and making an all or nothing dash for the sword. Relying purely on memory once more, she jumped over her replica's body before throwing her hand out in a desperate grab for the weapon, her heart jumping in excitement when she felt the metal collide heavily with her palm.

"You'll pay for that!" Wesker growled murderously, taking his hand away from his face long enough to turn to where he knew his prey would be. He didn't know why she hadn't fled the ship, and in truth he didn't care. All he cared about now was making the bitch pay for what she had done to his face and with murderous intent he advanced just as Alice swung the sword. Too late, he realised the danger when the shimmer of sharpened steel slashed across his throat and laid his neck open all the way to the bone.

"That was for you Carlos." Alice said, watching victorious as Wesker clutched at his open throat in an effort to stop the blood flow before dropping his gun and falling to the ground in a steadily growing pool of bloodied muck.

Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, she felt her knees give way and she collapsed weakly as her body began to tremble with happy sobs. It was finally over.

_To be continued…_

_AN: This is an edited version, made to comply with the rules of this site. The original can be found on Adult FanFiction. Finally I hope you all enjoyed this addition and Please Review._


	3. The Graveyard

Chapter 2

The Graveyard 

Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil Afterlife and I am not profiting from this work.

_…Six months later_

In the late hours of the Alaskan afternoon, the rolling waters of the Bering Sea were reflected as a deep Carolina blue. A marginal sea in the northern Pacific Ocean, the Bering stretched for over 770000 square miles from the northern borders of Asia all the way up to the costs of Northern Alaska and had been considered by many to be some of the most traitorous waters on the planet. Ravaged by impossibly strong currents that were made permanently ferocious by washing through its sixteen submarine canyons, the waters of this dreadful expanse of ocean had tossed and turned many of the floating wind-ships which had drifted into its tides over the centuries and the seasonal arrival of pack ice and bergs in autumn had made it a constant danger for any vessel carless enough to run astray.

Squinting through the clear fibreglass, Alice watched bemusedly as far below walls of white capped water rocked the sea. It was only May but already the approaching summer tides were rolling the sea to a violent shade of grey and she couldn't help but be thankful she'd decided to make the journey to Arcadia by air instead of sea. After all the trouble she'd gone through to take revenge on Umbrella, it just wouldn't do for her to drown in a summer storm.

A metallic sputtering that sounded ominously like bolts falling into a blender suddenly roared over the bellowing wind, draw her attention back to the plane's controls, to her dismay the needle on fuel gauge was poised over Empty. With a minor note of irritation, she took one had off the stick and reached back to the rear of the cabin where a pair of auxiliary fuel tanks had been jerry rigged to the engine. After a moment spent twisting the valves, the reserve aviation fuel flowed into the injection system and it hummed into life.

With the engine now purring like a kitten, she turned back to the instrument panel, her gaze lingering for a moment on the compass and directional Gyro before she checked her position on the set of navigational charts and maps she had arranged around the cabin.

'_Not long now…'_ She thought, more than a little relieved by the dwindling distance, before looking to the video camera which had been mounted on the top of the panel. The light on its side was blinking and instead of green, it was showing up as a danger  
>orange, the battery was almost dead and had switched to standby mode to conserve power. <em>'Better make this short.' <em>With a sigh, she activated the flight recorder.

"May 3rd, 1600 hours. It has now been A hundred and seventy-seven days without any signs of life. I'm at 58.37 degrees north, 134.58 degrees west and am now closing in on the coordinates for Arcadia, but there are no signs of it on any of the maps..." She hesitated; afraid to continue for fear that her doubts might be given life by her words. "Something doesn't feel right, but I don't know what and I can only hope that Claire and the others made it."

Turning the camera off with a hint of apprehension darkening her features, Alice cast her gaze up at the cockpit's screens to watch as the distant white-capped peaks of the Alaskan mountains darkened the horizon. Already clumps of thick ice had begun to appear dotted about the Bering and as she drew nearer the cost, great bergs rose up from the sea's depths to form unbreakable roofs above the rolling tides that survived both Alaskan summer and winter.

For over 500miles, the untamed wilderness of Alaska's south western region was a combination of thick boreal forests, steep outcroppings and deep water lakes. Forever in the shadow of the great mountain chains which encircled the state, it was scarcely populated and offered few sanctuaries to travellers from the dangers of its hollowing northern winds and hungry bear population.

Trying to conserve the little fuel she had left, Alice flew the _Fuji T-7_ up at such an angle that it could be caught and carried by the passing thermals while she observed the varied geography of the world beneath her. She kept going along the coast until mathematically she would have been on top of the coordinates the recording gave, but there was just one problem…

There wasn't any sign of Arcadia.

Cursing under her breath; she pulled back on the stick and brought the plane around in a curving arc before taking it down for a closer look. The terrain here was rugged with little to see but brown grassland and an occasional clumping of dead trees, but holding steady at 50metres, she could now make out an unusual cluster of landmarks that were gathered together about half a mile from the oceans lapping grey waters. Curious, she circled the site once before taking the plane in for landing.

Keeping the wings level, she lined the aircraft up for her angle of approach and began her descent. Rocked by suddenly fierce winds, the plane began to shake violently as it cut across the airwaves and with her heart aflutter, it took all of Alice's efforts to maintain the correct airspeed and keep the _Fuji_ levelled out. It was a hair-raising experience and despite her naturally stock expression, inside her mind was abuzz with panic as she desperately tried to calculate these new developments into her timing.

Feeling her stomach lurch as the ground hurried up to meet her, she lowered the flaps before jerking the controls back to compensate for the added drag. The engine stalled when the wheels touched down, the reassuring jolt of touchdown throwing her back into her seat and she couldn't help breathing a sigh of relief. Far from a seasoned pilot, she had only attempted a hand full of landing and this was certainly the first without a tarmacked road or runway to great her approach. It was an invigorating feeling to know her skills were improving.

She let the plane roll to a stop before unbuckling her pilot's harness and pushing back the fiberglass canopy. A cold breeze howled overhead but she ignored it as she swung her leg over the canopy and stepped on the wing. Dressed in a battered and oversized grey Russian flyer's jacket with a fur trimmed inner-lining and matching set of thigh high laced boots and black trousers, she was relatively well protected against the cold as the wind's cold tendrils people whipped locks of her auburn hair across her face. Yet as relieved as she was to be out of the insufferably cramped cockpit, her pretty face remain contorted with a look of scorn as she took in the space around her with adamant distaste.

Everywhere she looked, there was aircraft. Aligned all around her as if they were children's toys, the randomised mix of planes and helicopters stretched almost as far inland as her eyes could see. If it were not for their varying states of disrepair, Alice might have thought she had landed in the heart of some great, but primitive, airfield. Yet as it was, the open stretch of grassland appeared more befitting of the term junkyard, or a graveyard.

"So this is Arcadia?" She observed, her eyebrow rising with as she looked from one beaten up wreck to the next and tried to calculate just how many people had beaten her to what they hoped would be their last chance for salvation. There had to of been many, hundreds, maybe even thousands of refugees. But what could have happened to of made them all disappear? Had something dreadful happened, or perhaps they had grown tired of waiting for a hope that would never come and returned to the nomadic life of survivors on the run.

A frown formed across her lips as with a resigning shrug, she jumped down from the plane's wing and began to scout the area for signs which might tell her what had happened here. There wasn't much, aside from the occasional discarded food wrapper the vehicles' interiors had been picked clean and Alice was left to wander the deserted grasslands in silent contemplation until she heard a frenzy of whispered mutterings on the wind.

"Hello…" She called out, her hand immediately reaching beneath her jack for the holstered gun on her belt as she awaited the reply. Although she didn't particularly want to shoot any survivors, since the decay of civilization, banditry had become as common a danger along the road as that posed by the infected and she couldn't help noticing how perfect this place was for an ambush. With so much cover to hide behind, even a half-witted gang could set up an effective enough ambush for whoever came to answer the radio message and she had no intention of being caught unawares like that time back in Nevada.

Her voice carried well on the wind, but there was no answer to be heard as the whispers continued. Although little more than murmurs, she could make out snippets of what was being said and thought it might have been a man's voice, strangely he seemed to repeating himself and Alice, growing concerned, drew the heavy barrel of her from its holster before following the murmuring.

Keeping her eyes peeled for any signs of movement as she progressed cautiously through the maze of Aircrafts, Alice did her best to remain cool despite the erratic dumbing of her heart. She was getting close, so close in fact that the voice almost seemed to be whispering in her ear and as she passed a crack in the wrecked hull of a weather beaten DC-3 Transport plane, it bellowed out at her in a way that made her heart miss a beat. Whirling about, she thrust the revolver through the crack, her finger perched on the tightly wound trigger as if she were expecting something horrible to lurch out of the darkness to claim her life at any moment.

There was nothing there however and she gave her heart a moment to calm before lowering the heavy side-arm as she bent forward and climbed carefully through the crevice and into the blackness of the plane's interior. It was dark inside and her eyes struggled to adjust to the low light and could only just make out the metal ribcage of the roof above.

She must have entered the cargo hold because she could just make out a flight of steps ascending to the cockpit. The voice was coming from there so, aided only by the intricate web of light that filtered in through the tiny cracks in the transport plane's hull; she made straight for the source of the continued muttering and ran up the stairs with one hand on the railing, the other holding the magnum before her. The stairwell had grown flimsy with rust and her heavy footfalls made it shake violently as she took the footing two at time. Fortunately for her, the door to the control room had been left ajar so she needn't worry about the structure collapsing as she delivered a forward kicked to the barrier and burst inside.

The words were blaring out inaudibly now but the cockpit was empty and judging by the thick sheet of dust covering the monitors and control panels, it had been for some time. The windows were dirty but they gave her just enough light to see that A digital recorder had been set up across the instrument panels, its display blinking in an attempt to bypass its remaining power to whatever systems were still running. Her brow furrowing in confusion, Alice lowered her gun and gave the recorder the once over before idly pushing buttons until she found what she was looking for. With a low whistle, the device began refining its audio until it reached a level she could understand and then began to play.

"This is Arcadia, broadcasting on the emergency frequency at location, 114.08 degrees longitude, 51.08 degrees latitude. There is no infection. We offer safety and security, food and shelter. I Repeat…there is no infection. You are not alone."

Realisation struck Alice like a bolt of lightning and a look of undisguised horror masked her features as stepped back, visibly stricken. This was it, this was what had brought so many people to one of the farthest corners of the world, this is what had given all her friends hope and then ad revealed them to be a hollow shell.

She didn't bother to wonder who had put it there or why. As far as she was concerned, whatever it had sought to offer had expired long ago, there was no point keeping it active and in her rage, she raised the gun and squeezed the trigger. The recorder exploded but she didn't stop there and Alice kept firing until the wheel had run dry and the instrument panel resembled a slab of Swiss cheese.

* * *

><p>Exiting the plane, Alice continued her search until she reached what looked like the edge of the graveyard and heard the gentile lapping of waves on a beach bank.<p>

After the ominous quite of the Aircraft graveyard, the rolling grey waters of the Bering were a welcoming sight and Alice felt her heart jump as walking through a clumping of dead conifers, she spotted an all too familiar Umbrella helicopter perched in the dirty brown sand.

With its black armour marred by a score of dents and scratches and a thick inlay of rust covering its rotors, the Helicopter looked considerably more beaten than she remembered. She walked around the aircraft once, scrutinizing it closely before climbing through the open cabin door. She'd hoped to find a clue to the disappearance of her friends but tight confines of the ships inner belly were reluctant to give her anything other than the long dried bloodstains left by Dr Isaacs during his escape from the Las Vegas ruin just eighteen months before.

The rear of the cabin was empty, even the cushions from the seats had been removed, so she leaned through the void between the pilots' chairs in search of the flight recorder. It was gone, ripped from the control panel along with anything else that might have given her the clues she needed. Dismayed, she drew back and was about to leave the derelict aircraft when she caught sight of something lying half hidden beneath the co-pilot's chair.

It looked like a book and curious, she reached down carefully to retrieve it, being mindful as she did of any indications that it might be rigged or booby-trapped. Nothing seemed odd so she brought it into the light and found, to her surprise, that it was the notebook she'd handed to the girl K-mart at the end of their last meeting. Bringing the heavy tome up to eyelevel, she remembered the distressed look that had flooded the teen's pretty face as she jammed the book into her hands. The truth was always hard on the young and she'd asked hopefully for Alice to come with them, after seeing how card it had been for K-mart to bear, she hadn't had the heart to tell her they'd probably never see each other again.

Feeling her heart start to race, she began flicking through the familiar pages of the journal that had been taken over by newspaper cuttings and geographical mappings until she finally came to a handful of pages towards the back which had been taken over by scribbled scriptures that she recognised as being K-mart's writing.

The girl had documented the journey in impressive detail. It had been dangerous; they'd had to stop many times in search of fuel and supplies and as a result, a trip which should have taken just a few weeks had been stretched into months. Yet as she drew to the end, something about the inscriptions began to change and she could almost hear K-mart's cheery voice whispering the last sentence on the page.

_'We are here, Arcadia…at last…' _Smiling a bemused smile as she imagined the charismatically cheery girl's delight at the thought of their journey being over, Alice turned the page expectantly; only to find it blank, except for a hurried scribble in the lowest corner. _'…Something's not right._'

Unsatisfied, she thumbed through the remaining pagers but found them to be completely blank. No messages detailing where they might have gone or clues for to piece together, it was as if they had simply vanished into thin air like everyone else who had come to Arcadia in search of salvation.

Growling in frustration, she slammed the book shut and shoved it inside one of the inside pockets of her jacket before jumping down from the helicopter and made her way across the beach to the sea's rolling grey bank. Even in spring, the waters of the Bering were freezing and she could feel the chill of the surf rolling over her boots as she walked heatedly through the sloshing tide until finally she came to the decaying remnants of a water-soaked log which must have been washed up on the stronger winter tides that had been battering the Alaskan coast.

The sky was darkening, the setting sun turning the sky an ominous slate grey as immense clouds blotted out its weak light. It wouldn't be long before night set in and feeling her anger ebb like the waves at her feet, Alice decided to take care of the last bit of business and reached into one of the larger of her flight jacket's pockets to pull out a small digital recorder.

Balancing the recorder on a thick branch, she flicked through the settings before setting it to record. As the small red light flicked to life, she scouted down to sit atop the damp bark and began to recite the words which had been weighing so heavily on her heart.

"May 3rd, 19.30 hours, Arcadia. I have followed the recording's direction north to the shores of Alaska and found that no such place exists. There is just a field crowded with ghosts, and a beach." She exhaled deeply, her eyes drifting back across the beach to the helicopter and then to the graveyard. "I have found Claire's helicopter but there is no sign of her or the others. I have no idea what they found here but we all heard the transmissions and I have found the source of the message. Someone must have sent them. Someone must have wanted to bring all these people here for a reason. But why? And where did they all go?"

The question echoed in the air, taunting her mercilessly before mingling with the drumming of the tide on the shore and evaporating into nothing. This place reeked of death; there was nothing left for her here except the howl of the whistling wind and the whispers of long dead ghosts. With her hear sinking, Alice rose up from her perch on the damp and gave the darkening one last contemplating stare before turning back to the recorder. "Day 177…signing off." But as she reached for the terminating switch, her fingers slipped and thoughts she'd tried so hard to suppress suddenly spilled from her lips in a rush of hidden emotion. "And…I don't know if I can do this much longer."

It was hard to deny she was growing tired, tired of being alone, tired of never having anyone to confide in, and tired of always being the sole survivor. In those few invigorating months of hunting for and purging Umbrella's compounds, when she'd been surrounded by her clones, she had never had to suffer the bitter taste of solitude and she'd grown to enjoy the sense of companionship she shared with Gama, Beta and all the rest. But now they were all dead and even the solitude she'd once enjoyed seemed to have abandoned her.

"What if I'm the last? What if there is no one left? No one left to watch these tapes and learn from my mistakes?" The words were as frightening to her as the judging silence and she felt hot tears welling up inside before she could stop herself. "Is this my punishment for letting all this happen when I could have stopped it so long ago?" Overwhelmed, a single tear began to roll down her check, just as she a faint prickling sensation cropping across her shoulders. Recognising the feeling, she swung around and looked across the beach in time to see an illusive figure disappearing into the undergrowth.

Forgetting the camera, Alice jumped to her feet and took off at a run. Not daring to believe her eyes, she charged full out across the surf battered beach, her heavy boots splashing loudly in the rolling surf before she ascend to the drier sands and then to the dead, brown grass at the mouth of the trees. Clouded in shadow, she could just make out the fleeting figure darting between the trees like some elusive forest spirit and didn't give a moment's pause before plunging into the trees.

In desperation, she moved without restraint or caution and paid mind only to the protruding roots of trees which stretched up from the earth like the arms of hell, reaching up to claim her and drag her down to that fiery underworld. High above, dying branches plumed by dry brown foliage formed a dense canopy that blotted out the sun's waning light, casting her into an eerie gloom which only grew worse as she pressed on at speeds that were unwise. She didn't care about the danger, or the thorny shrubbery plucking at her clothes; all she cared about was reaching whoever it was. After being alone for so long, she couldn't afford to let this chance slip through her fingers.

It was getting harder to see in the gloom but with her chances of catching the fleeting shadow already dropping, she didn't dare slow. Instead, she ran and ran, until the dense wall of trees all around her suddenly fell away and she was thrust into a blinding well of light. Blinded by the brightness as her eyes struggled to adjust, Alice almost fell head over heels in her rush to stop and narrowly missed colliding with an abandoned land cruiser.

Coming to a halt and using a raised arm for cover, she gave her eyes a moment to become accustom to the painful glare before lowering the limb to find that she had emerged from the trees at the edge of the graveyard. To her dismay, there was no trace of her quarry and, to make matters worse, she didn't recognise the part of the site she'd emerged on. It was going to take some time for her to work her way back to her plane and it was unlikely she'd do so before dark.

Aggravated by this cruel twist of fate, Alice couldn't resist giving the discarded truck she had nearly crashed into a good kick. A dent appeared in the side of the door as the sole of her boot hit it with a satisfying _clunk_, yet the blow caused her foot to explode with a painful sensation and she couldn't help cursing under her breath as she limped back a step. Clearly, she was still trying to come to terms with her renewed human limitations.

After her bitter disappointment on the beach and then to come so close, only to have her hopes dashed once again, well this fresh anti-climax was hard to swallow and she thought she might just slip into a great black well of despair. To console herself, she tried to make herself believe that she had heard was probably just the wind in the trees or the overcurious nature of a skittish deer, anything to keep her from believing the obvious truth that whispered in the dark corners of her mind; she was an outcast, a shunned freak of humanity…

In her distressed state, she almost didn't hear a fallen twig snapping underfoot and wheeled about just in time to see something exploding out of the undergrowth. It was huge, whatever it was, and barrelling towards her with such haste that Alice scarcely had a moment before it was upon her. She tried to dive out of its path but it was too fast and hit her head on, knocking the breath from her as she was pitched back and together they went flying.

She wasn't sure how far she went but to say her landing was rough would have been the understatement of the century and she did cartwheels across the stone laden ground before rising up with both hands poised over her guns. Infected or not, her reflexes were sharper than any knife and she tugged both of her magnum revolvers from their leather confines before whirling around to face her new adversary with both pistols drawn and levelled. Only when she saw it, she was sure she was going to need something bigger, '_Like a Bazooka…'_

It was a bear, but not just any bear; it was the largest fucking Kodiak bear she'd ever seen. Already up and standing high on its hind legs, it towered over her like the biblical character goliath and she didn't need the likes of Sir David Attenborough to tell her that this large male was in his prime. With a thick brown pelt and paws that were larger than sledge hammers, even the obvious signs of malnutrition couldn't shatter this leviathan's air of invincibility. But maybe a couple of her Magnum shells could get the job done.

The guns were heavy under the weight of the fully loaded cylinder so to lighten the load; she fired a quick volley that exploded into the creature's hide. There was no point trying to negotiate, like the lions of the Salvo River, Kodiaks were very dangerous beasts at the best of times but a hungry bear would eat anything it could find and last she looked, she was the only thing in the area that was on the menu. However the shots seemed not to register with the bear as it gave a bellowing roar before swiping at her with its massive paw.

It was swifter than something of its size should have been and eyes coming alive with the danger, she only just lurched backward in time to avoid the bear's bone shattering left hook. Passing within millimetres of her, the claw appendage narrowly missed taking her eye out and she only had time enough to fire off a shot that passed harmlessly over its shoulder before she was forced to move. Crashing down on all fours, it came after her with a thunderous fury that made the ground shake and she had just enough time to dive under the nearby truck before it was upon her.

Looking back frantically as she crawled into the semi darkness and took shelter beneath the derelict 4X4, Alice watched as the frenzied bear flattened itself to the ground before it began pawing the earth in an attempt to reach her. Its immense claws tearing great trenches through the layers of leaves and dirt until the task appeared to grow too strenuous for the starving beast and it gave up, favouring instead to smash the truck with its heavy hide in an ill-conceived attempt to tip the vehicle over.

Unfortunately the math of the matter wasn't on her side, so with both .44s still clasped tight, she began to shuffle through the crawl space towards the light. It was a tight squeeze but as it was still furiously pounding against the stubbornly rooted truck, the bear failed to notice her leaving so she scurried beneath the automobile like a mouse in its tunnel. Immerging in the dirt on the far side, she took a quick nerve steadying breath before darting up and in one smooth motion; she turned and levelled her guns at the beast's bared flank while firing a blazing salvo of hot lead. As the revolvers jumped in grasp, the rounds slammed loudly into the animal's side, penetrating what should have been its heart and lungs.

Yet again the beast seemed not to feel her assault, in fact the blasts seemed only to invigorate the raging Kodiak as it turned towards her and lashed out with a sweeping blow of its paw that caught her in the chest before she could react and sent her hurtling through the air once more. For a horrifying moment she was trapped in free fall, scarcely conscious, it was an effort for her just to keep a firm grasp on her arsenal but when she crashed into something hard, her mind went blank and she let go of the magnums whilst being sucked into an impenetrable abyss.

It must have been the pain that caused her to awaken, for as she blinked past the first wave of nauseating sickness she became aware of a very pronounced stabbing pain in her side and realised that the bear's oversized paw must have bruised a few of her ribs. A resounding thud announced approaching danger and she looked up to find to her horror that the massive beast was coming towards her, and that she was unarmed.

Half dazed, she whipped her head around and began looking drunkenly for her revolvers. Only one was still loaded and what good that would do her was debateable, but she wasn't about to die while there was still a chance.

She didn't need to see it to know the bear was coming closer; its heavy bulking was all but shaking the ground with every foot fall and its musky odder of death and dirt was infecting her every breath like a sensory toxin. There could be no escape now; if she failed to find her loaded weapon then the beast would devour her, she'd have to kill it or die trying; those were her only options.

Then she saw it, one of her magnums laying not a metre from her at the base of a dead tree. She couldn't tell if it was the one she needed or not but the odds were even, it was a chance she'd have to take. So she reached out.

The gun was just out of reach and seemed to be taunting her limited reach with a dazzling shine that gleamed bright against the dark soil. With her heart racing, she could almost feel the bear's weight bearing down on her but she would not give up and so she began to crawl. It was only a small gap between her and it but the effort it cost her was gargantuan and she felt as if she had in fact struggled for over a mile before the chilled metal touched her fingertips.

The Magnum felt heavy in her hands as she grappled for it but her dazed memory couldn't recall if it was the weight of a gun that was loaded or not. It was hard to so she used both hands to scoop the revolver up before whirling about to level the gun at the beast. And there the bear was. It stood at her feet, impossibly large and ferocious as it bared its yellow fangs and roared a terrible sound of coming death.

"Eat this!" She cried angrily before pulling her finger tight around the trigger. The hammer fell and a plume of smoke burst from the silver barrel as it bucked in her grasp, a heavy calibre round exploding forth to slam into the back of the Bear's throat. Tearing through flesh and bone, an explosion of bloody gore erupted from the back of its skull as the bullet destroyed the bear's brains and then it fell dead at her feet with nothing but a weak grunt escaping its gapping muzzle.

Watching as the once mighty beast crashed to the ground, Alice felt a feeling of momentous relief swell up inside her and she stared down grimly at the animal's decapitated corpse. Yet death seemed to have robed the beast of its majesty and she couldn't help but note the great clumps of fur that were missing from its blood matted pelt. Her curiosity got the better of her.

Crouching over the remains, she contemplated the corpse for a moment before reaching down and running her fingers through its coarse fur. Like much that her life had become, killing the bear had brought Alice no pleasure but doing so was a grim necessity. She'd had no choice so now looked on the task the same way she had done when putting down the infected or eliminating Umbrella's pawns; unpleasant but vital. To her surprise, the fur came away at her fingers to reveal the black skin beneath and at least a half a dozen open wounds that had not been made by gunshots. The injuries weren't fresh but they were still weeping gore and at a closer look, she could clearly see that the blood was coagulated. This bear had been dead long before it found Alice.

'_Free of Infection huh…'_ She thought bitterly before recoiling from the infected corpse. After so much disappointment, she shouldn't have been surprised that another of the recordings claims had been proven false. Everywhere had once been free of the T-Virus, but time had seen to changing that and now the entire earth was slowly dying under its influence. Yet the discovery still brought a bitter taste to her mouth and she knew immediately that the time to leave this place had come. The bear was only the first, more and more infected would be coming here over the next few days and she had no desire to be around when they arrived.

Quickly collecting her lost magnum and shoving them both back into their holsters, she was about to head back to her plane when she caught sight of something shining bright on the 4X4'S dashboard. She knew it would be stupid to delay, there was still much she had to do before take-off and now there wasn't a moment too lose. Yet whatever it was inflamed her curiosity and she couldn't resist the mystery of discovery as she walked over to the truck to find it was nothing but a cup filled with small change for meters and the likes.

Alice couldn't help smiling as she scooped up a handful of coins and then let them slip through the gaps and rain back down into the cup. This was the best piece of news she'd had all day and she didn't hesitate to pick the container up and pour its contents into another of her jacket pockets. She then discarded the polystyrene cup and turned just in time to catch sight of the fist that slammed into her face.

Maybe she was still dazed; maybe it was because she hadn't had a decent meal in over a fortnight, either way this new assailant's blow cracked against her jaw before she could evade it and was so powerful she was thrown off her feet. Clattering to the ground, she narrowly missed cracking her head on the truck's axle but before she had a chance to gather her wits, her attacker was on her. The flash of steel was her only warning, a dagger, an axe, a sword; her mind couldn't discern the danger's nature, all she knew was it had a point that was hurtling towards her throat. In desperation she does the first thing that comes to mind and thrusts her hands up, catching the assailant's wrists just before the weapon could open her jugular.

It took all her strength to hold the blade at bay, the steel's sharpened tooth hanging over the soft skin of her throat with a thirst for blood that could rival even the hunger of the infected. Still weak from the bear attack, it was only Alice's will to survive that gave her the strength to keep fighting. And what will she had, for despite the overwhelming might behind the cold blade, she began to push up, forcing her adversary back and she seized the moment to look passed the tooth of steel to her assailant. The figure, despite all evidence to the contrary, was surprisingly skinny but cloaked in shadow as they were, it was impossible for her to make out anything distinctive except an unrecognisably feral pair of pale blue eyes.

She needed to end this and seizing her chance, Alice gave a deafening roar of pain before curling her lower back forward and kicking the shadowy figure in the side. There was a loud crack as the tip of her boot connected with ribs and in a mix of surprise and pain; it abandoned its attack to tumble back.

Rolling to her feet, her hand was halfway to the holstered magnum before she remembered that she had decided against reloading the revolvers, a decision she was already regretting, and so was forced to remain unarmed when her aggressor came at her again. Fast and light, the figure circled her once before exploding forward in an explosion of rage. The blade shimmered bright silver in the darkening twilight and Alice only had a moment to step aside before would have been plunged into her gut. Whirling, she countered with a right hook that slammed hard against her assailant's jaw.

Stumbling back, it lost its footing and collided with the truck, hitting their head on the side mirror as they went, before collapsing to the ground; unconscious and down for the count.

With her muscles aflame from exhaustion, there was nothing Alice would have liked more than to curl into a ball and rest however she wanted to know what, or indeed who, had attacked her. Grimly staring down at the dirty, rag clad figure, she was surprised to find that her assailant was actually a woman but a mane of tangled lustreless brown hair hid her face. Half expecting the woman to suddenly awake and attack her again at her moment, Alice took in a quick breath before kicking the wickedly curved knife from the savage's grasp and then bowed over the sleeping form to brush aside the matted locks and reveal the peacefully sleeping face of Claire Redfield.

Her breath catching at the sight of her friend's dirty face, Alice fell to her knees and began to silently weep with joy. Despite the outlandishness of the circumstances, she couldn't help but a feel an overwhelming sense of relief for having found the convoy leader; at last she wasn't alone.

The shrill song of a raven rang out in the distance, awakening her from the pool of emotion and bringing her back to the present. Remembering where she was, she took one last lingering look at the darkening horizon and then dropped her sights back to the still sleeping Claire; trying to estimate just how long it would take her to carry the unconscious woman back to her plane. It would be a hard journey and she'd have to move fast if she wanted to have any light left to search by, so bending down, she hooked her arms beneath Claire's and began to lift; only to catch sight of something beneath the folds of her dirty rags.

It wasn't much, merely a red tinge beneath the remnants of her tank top, but against her pale skin it glowed like a scarlet ruby on a snow blanketed field. However, before she could investigate further, the peacefully sleeping Claire jerked against her touch and the tattered garments fell open slightly to reveal what lay beneath. Alice felt a sickening lurch in her stomach as she took the sight in; there was a device which reminded her of the mythological Scarab bugs of Ancient Egypt stapled to the centre of her chest. Barely larger than a man's hand and held in place by six wickedly sharp talons that had bored beneath her skin, the device had a bright red casing that did nothing to hide the inner mechanics of a vile, filled with a pale blue liquid, being injected into its host's veins.

Recalling a similar set of operations performed by Umbrella Scientists, Alice had no trouble concluding that this evil looking machine was the cause of her friend's potently lethal hostility and accelerated strength and that it needed to be removed before she did anything else. The only question was how?

* * *

><p>With a scrutinizing gaze that missed nothing, Alice studied the bug shaped injector to the point of delirium. It was dark now and she only had the flickering light of her camp's fire to aid her, but her curiosity was insatiable and this device was fascinating. It reminded her vaguely of the face hugging life forms from the horror film series Alien that would infect a victim with the Alien's embryo while feeding him whatever he needed to stay alive. Unfortunately it seemed that unlike the face hugger, this device was not designed to deactivate once it had made first impregnation and had only shut off once she had managed to remove it from the sleeping Claire. To her annoyance, its deactivation had somehow neutralised whatever was inside the vile, preventing her from discovering whatever it was that had been poisoning Claire. She could only hope that the effects would wear off now that the injector had been removed.<p>

Compelled by interest, she never looked up from the gadget in her hands until she heard the faint rustle of movement above the fire's crackling song and immediately turned her attention across the camp to where she'd chained the sleeping Claire. Having not been interested in another fight after carrying the unconscious woman over her shoulder for what felt like miles, she'd taken advantage of her complacency to securely tie her to the landing gear of her plane. It may have been somewhat unconventional, but Alice liked it much better than the alternative and at least this way she didn't have to worry about her throat being slit while she slept.

There was a moment of tense anticipation as the infected woman's dozy eyes flickered open and Alice felt her heart flutter with delight when she thought she saw a spark of recognition light up her pale blue irises; but then it was lost in a flood of feral emotions and she began tugging at her chains with an urgent frenzy in a desperate bid to get free.

Alice watched her friend's struggles with a pitying gaze, wondering as she did what could have happened to her friend? What could turn a person as decisive and action orientated as Claire Redfield, into a wild savage; it shouldn't have been possible and yet her they were. She only hoped there was enough of who she used to be left to save.

"Hey…Hey…" She finally said, "It's ok, I'm not going to hurt you." She tried to sound soothing however the sight of her seemed only to agitate the bound woman further and her struggles seemed only to intensify as Alice slowly lowered herself down to her captive's level.

Not wanting to agitate her delirious friend any more than she had to, Alice just smiled warmly as she waited for the woman to relax in her presence. It took some minute but eventually Claire began to relax and let her arms go slack in their bonds, but her eyes continued to burn furiously as she glared up at her jailor with obvious mistrust. Clearly she hadn't forgotten their earlier meeting but Alice refused to let it get her down a. s she directed her gaze towards the fresh set of puncture marks that adorned her friend's chest.

"Yea, look I'm sorry about that," Alice confessed, sincere in her apologies as the woman realised what she meant and turned down to look at the open wounds that had been left by the Scarab's anchoring talons. She had done what she could to treat the injuries but they had still reddened and were blistering painfully. "But I had to get this thing off of you and that was the only way."

Watching Claire's reaction with a scrutinizing eye, she brought the Scarab up into the light and held it out to her in offering. For a moment, the bound woman only looked blankly at the device, but then a spark of recognition lit up her eyes with fright and she began pulling at her bonds again in an ill thought out escape attempt. So she did recognise something.

"What is this? Who did this to you? Where are the others?" She asked, unable to keep the sense of urgency from her voice. Yet Claire only looked up at her blankly, there was no sign of recognition or even understanding as her eyes darted from Alice to the Scarab as she bore her teeth in a feral threat. It was as though she were a dog that had been backed into a corner by a pair of thugs and was now preparing to defend itself. "Do you even know who I am?" There was no response, only a malevolent stare that made Alice glad looks could not kill and in resignation she decided it was time to go to plan B.

Rising to her full height, she put the scarab somewhere out of sight before climbing up into the cockpit of her plane and retrieving a bottle of water and a handful of paper tissues. Claire watched her mistrustfully, not sure what to make of the strange items the woman had produced from her dirty brown bird so she just watched balefully as her captor soaked one of the tissues in water before leaning over her. She thrashed violently when the sodden fabric touched her skin, but Alice didn't relent and instead she began wiping away the mixture of blood and dirt that masked the face of the woman beneath.

It required a lot of patents on Alice's part but after a few moments, Claire's struggles ceased and she felt a great surge of elation at the realisation that her plan was working.

"My name is Alice," She said, in an almost offhand fashion while dabbing at a particularly stubborn mark across her friend's brow. "We meet in the Nevada desert eighteen months ago. You were the leader of a convoy of survivors searching for a safe haven and you came here by Helicopter when we heard radio messages about a place called Arcadia." Using a dry tissue to quickly add the finishing touches, she couldn't help quirking her eye brow as she took in the startling transformation that had taken place before her with just a few pieces of cloth and some water.

Not wanting to undo the vital progress she'd just made with more questions, Claire forwent the interrogation and discarded the soiled fabrics before taking a swig from the bottle of water. Taking one last look at her captive, Alice was surprised to see an almost look in Claire's eyes. Quickly realising what she wanted, she held the bottle to her friend's lips and tilted it slightly so that she could drink.

"Well, at least we're making progress."

* * *

><p>After the frozen veldts and howling winds of Alaska, the western coasts of Canada were a godsend for Alice. The skies were heavy with grey, rain laden clouds and the waters battered the spectacular coastline with violent swells of white surf, but at least it wasn't quite so cold.<p>

Soaring as low as they were over the roaring waters of the Pacific, she was content after a turbulent morning to just watch the white capped swells of dark water crash against the brilliantly carved cliff faces that rose almost 100metres above the rolling costal depths. Indeed, this was the first part of her day that had gone according to plan.

Waking before dawn, she had hoped to of taken flight at sunrise but a quick inspection of revealed that under the new circumstances, they'd have run out of fuel before they even reached the boundaries of Sitka. In desperation, she'd spent the following hours scavenging the graveyard and siphoning off all the good grade fuel she could find until the tanks were full and only then could they finally could take off. After that had followed a bitter hour of battling ferocious winds as they flew above the Alaskan Gulf and its encircling coastline.

For what it was worth, she seemed to be making good time, already they had ventured into Canadian airspace and she had high hopes to be verging on what remained of California before nightfall. However the day was drawing on and with the surrounding storm clouds promising trouble ahead, she decided to take advantage of this brief moment of clarity to update her flight log and she turned her sights on the mounted camera.

"May 4th, 12.00 Hours. Now plotting a course via Prince Rupert and British Columbia down to Vancouver and then, if our luck holds, Seattle. After that, it's on to San Francisco and the rest of the western seaboard." Glancing back over her shoulder, she looked to the rear of the cabin and was unsurprised to find Claire where she had left her, jammed between two fuel tanks in the rear of the cabin. Her hands were still securely tied but after the late night wash and a changing those rags for a set of clothes that Alice had found while rummaging through some of the cars for anything they could use, she was starting to look more like the Claire Redfield she remembered. "My passenger is still as talkative as ever. She seems to be making progress but seems has no idea who I am. Whatever that thing attached to her chest was; it has completely wiped her memory. She doesn't remember who did this to her or what became of Kmart and the others. I only hope that the effects are not permanent." She ended the log entry without another word.

With her attention torn between watching the gathering storm clouds on the horizon and monitoring the control panel, the day seemed to pass by in moments and it wasn't long before Alice was searching the landscape for a place to land. By her calculations they were flying along a stretch of coastline that was somewhere along the border where the counties of Ventura and Los Angeles meet.

She knew it would only be a short flight to the greater city area of Los Angeles, an easy enough place to find a landing spot, but the storm clouds had been growing steadily worse and she couldn't risk going any further before night fall. Landing a plane in bad weather was one thing, but landing it in the middle of the night with no landing lights to guide her was another.

Pulling the stick around, she turned the craft inland and the roaring grey seas quickly vanished beneath the rolling hills of the Santa Monica Mountains as she searched for a landing site that wouldn't prove fitting for the term, suicidal. Unfortunately, while the Santa Monica range might not have been the tallest of southern California's mountain ranges, it was far from a barren plane. Stretching from the Channel Islands to over forty miles inland, the rocky peaks were more ancient than the European colonials and had formed a vast network of treacherous canyons and sedimentary outgrowths that threatened the destruction of any aircraft daring to land nearby. To that end, after twenty minutes circling the snaring peaks, Alice had never seen a more welcome site than the U.S. Route 101.

Stretching across the dusty landscape like a great grey serpent, the 101 was the only carriageway in California that spanned the entire length of the state's shoreline, reaching all the way from its northern coast down to the Greater Los Angeles Are, and conveniently cut straight through the Santa Monica Mountains. Smiling gratefully as she flew over the abandoned stretch of roadway and spotted a petrol station, she banked the plane hard and brought it around in preparation to land; her heart racing with terrified excitement as she aligned the aircraft with the road before taking it down.

"Hold on!" She yelled at Claire one moment before a violent jerk almost threw them both from their seats. Started, Claire lurched forward and hugged the back of the pilot's chair in fright as the plane touched down in the centre of the 101. Fighting to remain in control, Alice felt her teeth grating as the craft jarred and bounced thrice over the sun dried tarmac before setting down and beginning to slow.

Letting out a breath she hadn't known she was holding, Alice killed the engine and waited for it to roll to a stop before unbuckling her chair's harnesses and pushing the canopy back. Compared to the biting chill of Alaska, stepping out into the Southern California air should have been much like walking into an oven, yet there was an unseasonal chill on the wind that made her feel uneasy. A storm was defiantly coming.

Fortunately, a curious quirk in fate had allowed them to roll to the mouth of the service stations driveway so they needn't worry about finding shelter. Jumping out of the cockpit on onto the wing, she turned to find her passenger still clutching the seat in a death grip, obviously not as pleased with the landing as she was. It would take a lot of coaxing to get Claire back into the plane in the morning.

* * *

><p>The storm had arrived just before sun down. Thick grey thunderclouds that darkened the sky with an impenetrable canopy as heavy torrents of rain drenched the Santa Monica Mountains and screaming gales howled like Banshees. Safe and dry within the petrol station however, Alice could allow herself to relax. The doors were locked tight and she had set up a perimeter wire that encircled the station's boundaries, nothing was going to come near the site without her knowing about it.<p>

Leaning back in one of the chairs that she'd found hidden in the station's back room, Alice tried to ignore the hate filled stare that her companion was shooting at her and instead sought to lose herself mentally in the merrily crackling fire she had ignited within a rubbish bin. Much to Claire's contempt, she had used the pretence of making a fire to once again try and connect with her memory challenged friend, but she may as well have talked to the wall for all the good it did. Now all she did was watch her closely and with no small hint of malice, having rejected the back room's second seat she sat cross legged on the floor with her hands still bound. A bottle of water was resting by her feet, but she would only drink from it when she was sure Alice wasn't watching.

Tired and still aching from her confrontation with the bear the day before, she felt herself sinking into a state of sleep as she listened to the merry crackling of the fire and the rhythmic patter of rain hitting the petrol station's roof. It was getting harder to think, harder to keep her eyes open as she watched the flames lick and dance in the low light. Darkness descended and she felt all her cares and woes leaving her and everything seemed so peaceful that she wished it could stay that way forever. She lay there for hours, carefree and blissful until she heard the ringing song of the bells she'd hung on the perimeter wire sing out.

It was as if a bucket of cold water had been poured over her head and she bolted upright, her concealed pistols already in hand and drawn. Her stomach tightened when she saw them, dozens, no hundreds, of infected, all crowding around the opposite side of her fire. There were so many, she didn't have enough bullets to kill them all, and without even the wall of glass to defend her, she would only have time to kill a couple before they would descend upon her. But how had they have gotten in? She had been so careful, what could have gone so terribly wrong?

A pair of figures stepped out of the crowd and came around the campfire to stand before her, making Alice gasp with shock as she saw just who they were. The taller of the pair was Claire, her hands unbound with the feral madness burning bright within her eyes' pale blue light. On her left stood K-Mart, just as young and beautiful as Alice remembered.

"Oh…My God…K-Mart what are you doing here?" Alice asked, lowering the guns as her terror became momentarily forgotten in a shock of delight at the girl's miraculous appearance. Then the moment was shattered as before her very eyes, the pair's skin drew tight across their bone structure and the light of life vanished from their eyes. They were infected with the T-virus. Knowing what she had to do, Alice made to raise the guns, only her hands wouldn't move so Claire came forward, pouncing on her like a tigress ambushing a deer, and they both went tumbling back onto the chair's embrace…

Alice woke with a start, her heart racing as she looked up at the station's dirt smeared ceiling and realised it had all been just a bad dream. With a guttural moan of displeasure, she made to sit up; only her arms were trapped beneath an enormous pressure and wouldn't move. Confused, she looked down to find Claire Redfield crouched over her with a wild eyed look that was reminiscent of the one she'd held back at the airfield. She was using her knees to block her arms at her side, rendering Alice powerless as she leant forward…

…and seized her lips in a devouring kiss.

(Edited out to apply to 's rules, A full version can be found on sites such as Adult )

"Ohhh... fuck yes...I'm...I'm getting close...just a little…a little more…yes…yes…" Abernathy cried out, her head shaking back and forth as a wash of sheer pleasure wracked her body. She was getting close, so close that every minimal movement against her clit caused her to shiver and gasp as all too quickly she felt herself hanging on that delicious edge once again. Claire was right behind her, grunting in pleasure as her bound hands clutching the pale skin of Alice's inner thigh with a white knuckle grip while every roll of her hips pushing her closer and closer to that sweet oblivion.

Then suddenly she was there and Alice could only watch on in rapture as Redfield titled her head back and screamed a rich moan. Her lithe form began to shack, jerking wildly against her in a fit of passion that in turn threw her over the edge. They came simultaneously, crying out their pleasure as their orgasms exploded and a wash of white hot ecstasy rushed through their bodies.

The Storm had passed, the heavy sheet of rain now nothing more than a light drizzle; but neither Claire nor Alice could care as exhausted beyond measure; they clung together on the service station floor with nothing but their shared body heat for warmth. Half asleep, they listened to the light cracks of the dyeing fire until it lulled them into an easy sleep.

"Ohhh... fuck yes...I'm...I'm getting close...just a little…a little more…yes…yes…" Abernathy cried out, her head shaking back and forth as a wash of sheer pleasure wracked her body. She was getting close, so close that every minimal movement against her clit caused her to shiver and gasp as all too quickly she felt herself hanging on that delicious edge once again. Claire was right behind her, grunting in pleasure as her bound hands clutching the pale skin of Alice's inner thigh with a white knuckle grip while every roll of her hips pushing her closer and closer to that sweet oblivion.

Then suddenly she was there and Alice could only watch on in rapture as Redfield titled her head back and screamed a rich moan. Her lithe form began to shack, jerking wildly against her in a fit of passion that in turn threw her over the edge. They came simultaneously, crying out their pleasure as their orgasms exploded and a wash of white hot ecstasy rushed through their bodies.

The Storm had passed, the heavy sheet of rain now nothing more than a light drizzle; but neither Claire nor Alice could care as exhausted beyond measure; they clung together on the service station floor with nothing but their shared body heat for warmth. Half asleep, they listened to the light cracks of the dyeing fire until it lulled them into an easy sleep.

Hope everyone enjoyed this, as said the full version can be found on AFF as well as over less strict sites. As always Please review and tell me what you think and I shall try and get the next chapter done as soon as possible.


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